


This Is Your Heart - Can You Feel It?

by WakeUpDreaming



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Tower, Domestic Avengers, Dweebs, F/F, Foursome - F/F/M/M, I don't know how to tag this, Karaoke, M/M, Multi, Natasha Feels, Schmoop, This is the Karaoke Bullshit fic as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:16:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WakeUpDreaming/pseuds/WakeUpDreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye didn't expect to become a SHIELD Agent, but with the way her life never followed a given pattern, she began to expect the unexpected.<br/>Natasha Romanoff, however. She was a different story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Your Heart - Can You Feel It?

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from Bastille's "Laura Palmer," which is a truly stunning song.  
> This fic has consumed so much of my life, and I'm incredibly proud of what it's become. Over two months I've had to rework and alter certain timelines and plots, but I'm happy with the result. I hope this can attract other Natasha/Skye lovers, because Hack Widow? It's a ship that sails itself.

Skye’s heard all of the stories about Natasha Romanoff. She’s SHIELD’s deadliest agent. She can beat any lie detector put in front of her. She’s taken down more marks than anybody else in SHIELD.

So when she meets the legend and the legend is upside down in an office chair, playing with a yoyo and wearing yoga pants and a highlighter pink tank top with the words, “hella wicked” on it, Skye’s convinced it’s an imposter.

“Agent Romanoff?” she tests carefully.

The redhead swings around in the chair and is sitting, one fluid movement, cross legged in the chair. “Agent Skye,” she says, tone professional. The yoyo is gone. Skye has no idea where it went.

There’s something about meeting one of your heroes in person and having them being ridiculously fucking hot and also wearing a shirt that’s low cut enough that –

Skye stops that train of thought immediately and tries to remember why this meeting was called.

Right. Coulson and the director thing. Right. “So,” Skye begins, already not saying what she planned on, “uh, Coulson’s director now.”

“I already knew that,” says Natasha. She leans a little further forward.

Then something dawns on Skye. “Wait a second. How did you know my name?”

Natasha gives her a look. “Do you want the ‘I was a hacker before you hit third grade’ explanation or the ‘I’m a spy’ edge?”

Skye starts. “Right,” she says. “Good point.” She clears her throat. “Well, in the same hacker vein, Coulson asked me to team up with you to develop a new anti virus/anti attack software for the programming in SHIELD. Apparently we’re his best.”

Natasha stands and tosses herself effortlessly into the chair next to Skye. “Alright,” she says, and she leans close to Skye, a little too close. Skye swallows and tries to keep herself from staring. “I’d agree with that,” says Natasha. “Your reputation is quite formidable around here.”

“Oh, because of that Cybertek thing?” Skye laughs nervously. “Yeah, that bomb thing wasn’t actually that hard to configure.”

“I’m talking,” says Natasha, kicking her legs up on the table, “about how easily you hacked into Cybertek’s systems and managed to reprogram Deathlok’s eye without anybody even noticing. Anybody can make a bomb – talk to Barton if you want a good story – but you managed to get into that system piece of cake.”

Skye shrugs, letting herself feel a little proud. “Yeah, well,” she says, “pretty packages don’t just hold air, you know.”

“Yeah,” says Natasha, looking at Skye in a distinctly not professional gaze, “no kidding.”

There’s a pause, and then Skye finds herself making a strange noise as she slides away. “So!” she exclaims, pulling out her laptop in a fairly indelicate manner. “Got any ideas about the possible programming?”

The discussion shifts and they discuss how to eradicate any of the spyware that Hydra left behind, Natasha at one point bumping Skye out of the way to access some programming in the SHIELD database that Skye’s not even sure Fury had access to. But Skye doesn’t ask about how she got to it, and instead just watches closely and listens to Natasha’s every word about the system. There’s a lot of stuff she’s pretty sure she’s never going to be allowed to see, but Natasha keeps talking so Skye keeps listening.

Then Natasha ends up literally in Skye’s lap. “Are you listening?”

Skye nods. “Uh, yes,” she says, “I mean, yeah. Infiltrating the system through its own leaks to figure out how to plug up the…” She swallows, “holes. Right.” God damn her dirty mind.

Natasha studies her for a minute. “Alright.” She hops off of her lap. “Great to meet you, Agent Skye. I look forward to working with you.” And she leaves.

Wait a second. “Did you just wink at me?” Skye asks.

Natasha shrugs. “The world will never know.”

She walks away and Skye can’t really do anything but stare at her as she goes, a little too convinced this is going to go far differently than Skye could have ever imagined.

~~

They work together for a week, and between her skills and Natasha’s, Skye’s pretty sure the project is going to be over in under two months.

She kind of doesn’t want it to be over in two months. Natasha is FUN, and Skye hasn’t been shot at in, like, a year. That’s a record since joining this group of numskulls.

So when she’s at her desk, half dozing off because she hadn’t slept the night before because of the Quinn nightmares, which, okay, should be a reason to call out of work. Besides, they’re three months ahead on the project anyway, she’s not expecting someone to walk inside the room without announcing themselves before they’re basically on top of her.

“So I hear you wanted to be a field agent,” says Natasha, leaning over Skye’s shoulder. Skye jumps about three feet in the air and slams her knee into the desk. She makes her greatest effort to pretend she doesn’t feel it, and instead turns to Natasha. “You know, before your SO became a big flaming pile of shitbag.”

Skye guesses that Natasha heard Ward’s eye candy comment. “You heard correctly,” says Skye. “What is this about?”

“So if you want to be a field agent,” she begins, and Skye does her best not to stare at the way her hair brushes against her neck, “why are you sitting at this desk?”

Skye scoffs. “Because my supervising officer was a Hydra agent, I never finished my training, and they needed me back here because I don’t have killer thighs and fighting skills that are more impressive than my hacking ability.” She frowns comically. “They got real pissed when they found out Hydra had files of their own and nobody but Fury found them until it was too late.”

Natasha looks down at Skye’s thighs then back to her face. “They don’t look bad to me,” she says honestly, but before Skye can react, Natasha continues. “Look, if you’re interested, I’m willing to sign up to be your SO.”

Skye blinks. “Thanks,” she says carefully, “but I think there’s a reason Coulson never got me a new babysitter after that whole deal with the SHIELD rebuild, especially considering I basically became an agent the day everything went to shit. I’m now just office baby.”

“So you don’t need an SO,” says Natasha. “I’ll just guide you.”

Skye sighs. “Actually, Coulson said the badge got revoked since there was serious doubts about my loyalties when all the shit hit the fan.” Skye rolls her eyes, leaning back in her seat. “Apparently getting shot for the idiots wasn’t enough to convince them I wasn’t in it for the Rising Tide anymore.”

Natasha winces. “That’s awful. But you’re here though, right? There has to be a reason.”

Skye shrugs. “I’m still not sure everybody trusts me. They probably decided I would do better work hacking for a good cause and all that. Keep me busy.”

Natasha stares at her for a moment. “I could get you back in as a field agent.”

Skye just stares at her. “Yeah,” she scoffs, “right.”

Natasha sighs. “When are people going to learn that Hill and I really run the show?” she sighs. She turns Skye around in the chair, pressing her arms in each arm of the chair. Her face is a breath away from Skye’s. If Skye moved slightly she could definitely kiss her.

Which is an idea Skye has definitely been trying to fight off for the week she’s been working with Natasha.

“Are you here for a reason other than that?” Skye asks. “Because if you want to do an attempt hack on my portion of the system – ”

“No,” says Natasha. Her eyes bore into Skye’s. “I just wanna know if you’ll met me beat you up three or four days a week to get you up for training in the field.”

Skye can’t tell if Natasha’s fucking with her. There’s a very good chance she is – Natasha once pretended for four weeks to be in love with Fitz, just to confuse him to hell and back.

“You serious?”

Natasha nods. “I always enjoy beating the crap out of newbies.” And that’s when she leans in even closer, her lips at Skye’s ear. “And believe me. I’ve got some good moves.”

And then, quick as she leaned in, Natasha’s halfway across the tiny cubicle and hopping away. “See you in the gym at Avengers tower around six?” Her tone is miles different from the whisper, and Skye’s thrown off enough to answer, “I don’t leave work until six.”

“You’re out at five today,” says Natasha.

“Stark hasn’t given me access to the Tower yet.”

Natasha scoffs. “Please,” she says, “I programmed you into the access codes the first day I met you.”

Skye tries not to think too far into what that means, but can’t keep her eyes from following Natasha as she leaves.

~~

“Hello, hacker baby,” says Stark, and Skye jumps about eighteen feet as she tries to subtly sneak in through the front door. “What, you think you could get in here without me knowing? My people are here.” He takes a bite of – is that celery? – and it crunches loudly as he says, “I protect my people.”

“What, do you think I’m going to hack into your Iron Man suit?” she asks.

“That was you?!” he exclaims, a little celery falling out of his mouth.

Skye stares at him. It’s a split second decision, because she really would like to take credit for it, but if he thinks it was her he might put precautionary protections on it to keep her particular brand of analysis from figuring it out.

“No,” she says, “but I will definitely keep that possibility in mind.” She sends him her most devilish grin.

Stark walks away from her, crunching his celery in what assumes is a menacing way to people who haven’t heard the story about Iron Man getting stuck in a public toilet.

“Hi, Skye,” comes Natasha’s voice, right at Skye’s ear. She jumps about four feet in the air this time, and fights back a chance to hit her in the face, but, of course, she’s dealing with the Black Widow. Instead of hitting Skye her, Natasha catches her hand and twists her so she’s being dipped in Natasha’s arms.

“Hello, Natasha,” says Skye. “Can I have my feet back?”

Natasha gingerly sets her on her feet, and Skye stands up.

“So,” she says, unwrinkling her outfit. “I have to ask. What exactly gives you authority to be a supervising officer?”

“I’m an Avenger,” says Natasha, “and I have clearance so high I know some things Coulson doesn’t know. Frankly, I do what I want.”

It simultaneously concerns Skye and turns her on. It’s confusing.

“Alright then,” says Skye carefully. “Are we ready to spar or whatever now?”

Natasha nods. “Let’s get to the gym.”

It ends up being four floors up and the fourth room in the third hallway, and Skye’s pretty sure she would have gotten lost had Natasha not been dragging her by the arm.

Skye gets extremely distracted by the sight of Clint Barton and James Barnes, assassin extraordinaires with booties extraordinaire, wailing on each other like nothing Skye’s quite seen before. It reminds her a little bit of when May went at Ward, but in that situation she was less enjoying the show as enjoying watching Ward get the everloving crap kicked out of him.

“Yeah,” sighs Natasha, “it’s pretty hot when they do that. I’m a better fighter though.”

“Bet you are,” says Skye.

“We can hear you,” comes Barnes’ voice, and then he slams Barton to the mat and presses him to the ground there with a knee to the chest.

“And though we appreciate the staring,” says Clint, voice gruff from the effort he’s putting into trying to shove Barnes off, “it’s kind of throwing off our game.”

“Good point,” says Natasha. “Let’s see how you do without preparation.”

“Without pu –?” is all Skye can get out before Natasha’s got her on the floor, pinned to the mat.

“Reflexes are slow,” says Natasha, studying her face. “Not quite as strong as I had hoped, but,” she hops up and pulls Skye up with her, “we can work on that, and they could help.” She turns over to where Clint has Barnes flat on his back, his left arm pinned underneath him. Clint’s poking him in the nose and Barnes, it appears, is trying to bite his hand off. “On second thought,” she says, “I don’t want you picking up any of their embarrassing habits.”

She calls up on Clint and Barnes to stop being absolute idiots, and thus begins the weirdest hours of Skye’s life.

Natasha decides that it would work best if she coached Skye as Skye fought with someone else, so Natasha could observe her fighting skills, so on her first day of field training in the new regime, as it were, Skye’s fighting hand to hand combat with an Avenger and a metal armed walking innuendo with a distractingly nice ass.

“Are you sure I should be practicing with experts?” Skye asks from where she lay on the ground. Clint actually flipped her over his back, and lowered her to the ground instead of letting her drop. Except, when she tried to get up, he pinned her with a foot on her chest. “Because experts have incredibly smelly feet.”

“Hey!” exclaims Clint, moving his foot. “I’ll have you know, I shower daily.”

“Not enough,” says Natasha and Barnes simultaneously.

“Here,” says Barnes, “I’ll teach you.”

Natasha’s eyebrows shoot up. “No way, Barnes. You can spar with her, but I’m teaching her.”

The Winter Soldier looks really, really messed up with a pout on his lips. “How about a little?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Skye says, sounding stupidly eager to her own ears.

Clint gracelessly turns his snort of laughter into a cough.

“Shut up, Smelly Foot,” snaps Skye. It pulls a laugh out of Barnes – it’s low and ringing, and not something she would have expected from him. She never expected she’d ever hear him laugh.

“I like her,” says Barnes. “We’re keeping her.”

Natasha shoots him a look Skye really wants to ask about, but before she gets a chance to, Barnes runs at Natasha. It looks like he’s going to take her out, but Natasha springs backwards onto her hands, flipping sideways, and then she’s on the other side of Skye and Barnes is tumbling on the floor.

“How,” is all Skye can manage.

Natasha shrugs. “We’ll get you there.”

“I haven’t done a cartwheel correctly since I was four.”

Barnes stares at her from where he sits on the ground. “Maybe you should get taught by Clint.”

“Hey!”

There’s not much sparring done that night, but Skye learns how to punch correctly – something Ward apparently never thought to teach her – and she actually nails Barnes in the nose, which might be her proudest accomplishment since that time in eighth grade when she blew a bubblegum bubble in Sharie Bellington’s Chop Suey.

“We’ll get you better at it,” says Natasha, clapping Skye on the shoulder. “And it’s now time for you to go to bed.”

Barnes’ eyebrows shoot up. “That’s forward.”

Natasha takes off her shoe and whips it at him, hitting him square in the chest. “And that’s a shoe,” she says coolly. “You can either shut up or get hit with another one.”

“Or another three,” says Skye, holding her converse up in the air.

Barnes sends Natasha a look, something between adoration and bemusement. “Where did you find her?”

Skye is very pleased with how the day was going, despite her overarching sweatiness and the ache already building in her stomach from where Barnes made her do three hundred crunches because she was “slacking.”

“She found me in an office,” Skye says. “But she’s right. I need to be at work tomorrow at eight, and it’s,” she checks her watch and groans, “it’s eleven o’ clock.” She glares at Natasha. “I blame you and your two hour dinner break.”

Natasha shrugs. “We worked hard,” she says, “you needed carbohydrates.”

“More like she wanted to watch you lick pasta sauce off your fork,” says Barnes.

He gets another shoe, this time pelted at his head.

“We’re leaving now,” says Skye, trying to mask the fact that she is most certainly blushing horribly.

They walk out the door of the gym.

And immediately Steve Rogers – Captain America, the Captain of fucking America – runs into them with way too much energy and a smile that probably is blinding her.

“Hey guys!” he exclaims. “Dr. Banner altered coffee. I can drink coffee now. Isn’t it great? Where’s Bucky? Bucky loved coffee. This is good coffee. Do you think I’m caffeinated?”

Skye has no idea how to respond.

“Do YOU think you’re caffeinated?” Natasha asks carefully.

“I dunno!” Steve exclaims. “Haven’t felt this way in seventy years. Has coffee always been this good?”

“Try Starbucks,” suggests Skye. “They have drinks with chocolate chips in them.”

Steve’s face lights up. “I gotta tell Bucky.” And he bolts into the gym.

Natasha groans, leaning against the wall. “Puppies,” she sighs. “They’re all hyperactive, drunk, puppy children.”

“That sounds like a Loki experiment,” Skye says.

Natasha huffs out a laugh. “It really does,” she mutters. “It’s kind of exhausting keeping them in line. Like Steve there? He was a guard dog with Bucky for the first few weeks Bucky was back, but when Bucky got to where he is now – which wasn’t a short amount of time, mind you – they started kissing in public and snuggling and, ugh, having sex EVERYWHERE, and how exactly do you tell two ninety years olds to stop blowing each other in the kitchen because you’d rather not see naked people when you get up at 2am for a glass of water?”

Skye just sort of blinks. “I’ve never had to consider that scenario,” she says carefully.

“Exactly!” Natasha exclaims. “And I shouldn’t have to, I feel like. But, seriously. I deal with it every day. All day. Once,” she says, dropping her head against the wall, “I actually had to make Steve a glass of milk one night, because he couldn’t sleep and I figured I would be nice. And then Tony heard I did that, so he started making Momtasha jokes until I kicked him in the nads one too many times.” She makes a strange half-whimpering noise and turns to Skye. “It’s like I had six babies with Pepper and Sam as co-parents without the fun part, and I’m not even good at it.”

Skye considers her next words very carefully, and by very carefully, she means it popped into her head and she blurted it out immediately, because it’s the best idea Skye’s ever had. “Natasha,” says Skye, “do you need a place to stay?”

Natasha groans and drops her head in her hands. “I can’t stand babysitting those idiots anymore,” she grumbles. “I love Pepper, I really do, but she’s more suited to keeping them in line than I am.” She lifts her head. “I mean, I’m a spy. I fight crime and aliens and beat up Russian asshats who think they’re smarter than I am. I don’t do kids.”

“Well, technically, they’re adults.”

“Yeah,” says Natasha, “but one’s got rage problems, one’s got alcohol problems, one’s got a metal arm and trust issues up the wall, one’s got a hero complex so big he literally crashed a plane for it, and all of them except for Sam have some PTSD that they need to work through before they can be trusted to function on their own. I feel like kids might be easier.” She stares at Skye. “Can I really stay at your place?”

Skye nods. “Well, yeah,” she replies. “Not like I’d offer and take it back. You an easy roommate?”

“Not really,” says Natasha, “I snore.”

“I’m sure I can deal with that with you on the couch.”

Natasha sends her a little smirk. “I can be loud.”

Skye certainly isn’t blushing over what else that could mean. “I’ll live. Come on.” She grabs Natasha’s arm and drags her out of the Avengers tower. “We’re going to have you sleeping on a futon.”

“Whatever it is,” says Natasha, “it’s going to be more comfortable than the cave James, Clint and I had to sleep in during that infiltration case in Siberia last year.” She scoffs, remembering something Skye can’t see. “That one was rough.”

“I also have heat,” says Skye, and she’s not sure why. But Natasha smiles at her and when Skye gives her a blanket – one of Skye’s favorite, purple and soft and something May had bought her for a housewarming gift – it’s almost like Natasha belongs in Skye’s tiny apartment.

“Sleep well,” says Skye, proud she got the words out, “I’m taking a shower then crashing.”

When she gets out of the shower, Natasha’s curled up on the couch around herself, taking up less than a quarter of the futon, and Skye suddenly realizes just how small she is.

“Night,” Skye finds herself saying, and she pulls the blanket up around Natasha’s shoulders.

~~

“They need you in interrogation,” is the first thing Natasha says two weeks later. They’ve both made camp in Skye’s office, which is weird, because Natasha’s office is certainly bigger, and she’s said multiple times how much she hates small spaces. Skye isn’t quite sure what to do with that information.

“How do you know that?”

Natasha scoffs. “I have full reign to hack anything in the SHIELD system. You think I didn’t tap the phones?”

“You are a scary, scary woman,” says Skye.

Natasha shrugs. “You’re not the first person to say that.”

“Well, since you know,” Skye begins, “why do they need me in interrogation? I hack and I poorly try to beat people up. Interrogating is more your thing.”

Natasha’s face hardens for a moment. “It’s Ward.”

And Skye’s sure at that moment she’s going to do whatever they ask. “What do they need me to do?”

“You apparently are one of the only people he hasn’t been threatening to tear to pieces the next time he sees them,” Natasha says, her shrug and tone too casual to be natural. “They think you could get some information out of him about Hydra’s secret cells.”

“You knew about this,” Skye asks.

Natasha stares at her. “How – goddamn, am I losing my touch?”

“No,” says Skye, turning back to her computer screen where she had been typing, “there’s just nothing about what they’re trying to get him to spill in the files.”

Natasha studies her. “You’re kind of scary smart, you know?”

“Not exactly,” Skye shrugs. “Hacked into it when you said they’d need me. It’s feeding a transcript into my phone.” She shows it to Natasha. “See?”

Natasha nods. “You okay with doing this?”

Skye takes a deep breath. “Yeah. I can do this.”

Even when she’s standing in front of him, with this glass in between them, there’s a strange sort of rage welling in Skye’s chest. Seeing Ward was like how she always felt like seeing her parents would feel like. Betrayal. Rejection. Hurt.

But a new element, the desire to rip him to shreds and give him an explicit reading of every single thing she knew he’d done, well. That was brand new.

He looks thin. Thin and drawn, an expression like weakness and surrender marring his usually lovely face. Skye always thought he was a strange sort of beautiful. Now she sees him as pathetic and despicable.

The realization pierces her like Quinn’s bullets.

“You okay?” murmurs Natasha to her side. There’s a warm hand, a firm press against her back, and Natasha’s hold on her is reassuring and steady. “He can’t hurt you now.”

Skye sets her jaw and exhales sharply. “It’s not him I’m worried about,” she replies. “It’s me.” She turns to Natasha. “I’ve never really wanted to kill anybody before. But then Ward comes along and I’m totally willing.” She can’t meet those eyes. “I actually regret not letting Deathlock kill him. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me?”

There’s a pause, something convincing Skye that maybe Natasha’s been in this room before, has read every file on what happened, because the conviction in Natasha’s voice when she says, “There’s nothing wrong with you,” actually makes Skye believe her.

“Are you prepared?” Hill asks, her arms folded across her chest. “If there’s too much history behind here we can get somebody else – ”

“No,” says Skye firmly. “I want in.”

Hill nods once, and unlocks the door.

“Give him hell,” says Natasha. “I’ll be right on the other side of the glass.”

Skye pushes the door open, forcing herself to meet Ward’s eyes with her first step into the room.

“Long time no see,” he says, chancing a smile.

A derisive scoff comes out of Skye, a cold cruel sound that she never thought she’d be able to make. “Wish it’d been longer,” she grumbles.

“I’m sure you weren’t number one for this interrogation,” he says, “what, Romanoff was busy?”

Skye actually laughs. “No,” she says, “but she’s right outside the window if you want to say hi.”

The color drains from his face as the window fades and Natasha’s standing there in her Widow uniform. She waves, just a little flick of her fingertips. Her expression is deadly.

“Yeah,” says Skye, “she knows about your eye candy comment. She’s not happy about it.”

“Then why isn’t she in here?” Ward asks. “God knows she’s got the Red Room skills to get me talking in seconds.”

“She wanted to give me this,” says Skye. “Plus, she liked my femme fatale angle.” She gives him what she hopes is the sickest smile in history. “The penny drops, right?”

Ward rolls his eyes so hard Skye’s surprised he doesn’t fall over. “Can we stop going over that?” he groans. “Jesus, it’s like you people can’t let that go.”

“Penny’s aren’t fool proof,” says Skye. “But enough of the pleasantries. I need to know everything you do about the hidden sleeper cells in New England. And don’t try to pretend you don’t know, because we know you do.”

“You and the spider can’t hack into the cute little Hydra planbooks?” he asks.

The comment bites. “We’re working on it,” says Skye steadily. “But it’ll be a lot easier if you just tell us. We know you were in deep enough with Garrett to hear some of his plans.” She sits in the chair in front of him, kicking her boots up onto the table. “So start talking.”

“There’s nothing else to give you,” says Ward easily, “why don’t you grab that truth serum you’re so fond of?”

“Because we both know that was one-time only, that most of it was lost during Hydra’s raid on the Triskelion, and we also both know that Coulson’s got the last little bit of it under lock and key.” She shifts, resting an elbow on the table. “So you’re up. We know you’ve got something.”

Ward makes a face like he’s considering it then shrugs. “I’d rather not.”

“If you want me to grab Romanoff, I can,” says Skye, sliding her legs to the floor, letting each boot thump heavily. “Or I can get May in here and they can both get a little payback.”

There’s a flicker of something in Ward’s eyes. “Oh,” says Skye, “you’re afraid of May. I get that. We could have her come in. Staple something else of yours to the floor.”

“Never knew you to be crass, Skye,” he says with a tilt to his head.

“You never knew me at all, Ward.”

“I’d beg to differ.” He’s smiling at her – something that would have warmed her before but makes something sick and slimy crawl its way up her throat.

“Don’t make me puke on you,” she snaps. Then she reconsiders. “Actually, keep doing that. Puke might make you talk.”

He stares at her. “What is wrong with you?”

Skye shrugs. “Lots of things. Mostly you. Partially being shot twice. A little bit that I still feel like throwing up.” She sits on the table, enjoying how she’s kind of towering over Ward at this angle. “Feeling like talking now?”

“No,” he says, “but I’m feeling like you’ve gone a little insane.”

“You’re the baby Nazi,” says Skye, rolling her eyes, “and I’m the insane one. Alrighty then.”

They go back and forth like this for what Skye feels like forever but she’s told it’s half an hour a little while later. Ward won’t talk to her, but he seems to be weakening in her presence, and maybe that’s enough.

Eventually the door opens, and Natasha walks in.

“Hey, Skye,” she says. “Thanks for keeping Ward occupied. Would have been hell getting this stuff with him being all belligerent and block headed.”

Now Ward’s really confused. Skye smirks at it. It’s an awful look on him.

“What,” says Skye, “you think this conversation turned that many corners for no reason?”

“What did you do?” he asks.

Natasha leans against the wall, one thickly heeled boot thudding against the wall as she kicks it up. “Got a look at that diary of yours.”

“It’s a ledger,” Ward snaps before he can catch himself.

Skye tries not to laugh, and then doesn’t have to try, because Natasha’s stare is deadly.

“Yeah, I know a lot about ledgers,” Natasha says, dark and dangerous, “and this isn’t one.” She slams it on the table in front of him. “Should I read it out loud to us all or do you want to open it and show us the important parts so mixed company don’t hear the things you want to keep hidden?”

Ward’s face drains of all color, his eyes darting from Natasha to the book. Like he could reach it while cuffed before Skye or Natasha disabled him.

“What’ll it be, soldier?” Natasha says, her voice almost a whisper.

Ward doesn’t respond.

Natasha picks up the book in her hands, running her fingertips down its spine, then flips it open.

“Hmm,” she says, “April first, 2014. Oh, that’s when it was all about to come down, wasn’t it,” she says quietly. She reads for a moment, and then, for the briefest of seconds, something flashes over her vision. Her face melds back into perfect detachment almost instantly. “Well this is interesting.”

“Don’t,” Ward croaks out, like he didn’t mean to say it.

Natasha slams the book down hard enough that Skye jumps. “Yeah,” says Natasha. “Didn’t think you’d want Skye seeing that. So tell me. Which pages will be of interest to SHIELD?”

There’s a little more argument, Ward’s eyes flickering to Skye’s almost too many times as he fights with Natasha, but he eventually gives in. Skye takes her laptop and files the appropriate information into a SHIELD-accessible file and posts it to the drives of the necessary recipients.

“Thank you,” says Natasha icily, “for your cooperation.” She picks up the journal. “I’ll be keeping this.”

“You can’t!” Ward shouts. “That’s personal property, I – you can’t do that!”

Natasha sends him a deadly smile. “You’ll come to find that, here? I can do what I need. And sometimes, what I need to do is also what I want to do.”

She takes Skye’s hand and pulls her out of the room, closing the door.

“What did you read in there?” is Skye’s first question when they get into Hill’s office.

“That can be discussed later,” says Hill, but Natasha shakes her head.

“She deserves to know now,” says Natasha firmly. “Skye, did you know much about Ward’s past?”

She shrugs. “I know his older brother was a jackass. I know Ward had to beat up his younger brother. Not much past that.”

Hill huffs something like a laugh. “If only that was the worst.”

Skye frowns, feeling like she’s missing something. “There’s more?”

Natasha nods grimly. “There’s – it seems like the journal was an outlet of sorts. Where Ward put his…” She trails off. “His worst ideas.”

Skye stares at her. “Do I want to read it?”

Hill says, “No,” while Natasha says, “I don’t know.”

“She doesn’t,” says Hill. “It’s disturbing, even to me.”

“She’s an agent, Hill, it’s not like she’s a kid.” Natasha plants her hands on her hips. “She’s not made of glass.”

“She’s also in the room,” says Skye.

They turn to her. “Tell you what,” says Natasha. “I’ll go with you. We’ll read it together. Or I can skim for what seems relevant and explain it to you.”

“Don’t you have better things to do?”

Natasha shrugs. “Not really. Paperwork, but anything’s better than paperwork.”

“And you don’t mind having to read it,” says Skye.

Natasha chuckles, low and without humor. “I bet I’ve been through much worse.”

Natasha picks up the book and holds out her hand again. Skye takes it.

“Later, Maria.”

When they get to Skye’s neck of the woods, they skip over it and keep walking until they hit Natasha’s office, which is unfairly big considering Natasha barely works inside SHIELD during normal work days. Natasha tosses herself into a chair, playing with the journal in her hands. “You sure you want to do this?” Natasha asks.

Skye opens her mouth, entirely planning on saying yes, but she hesitates. “I think so,” she says instead. “Probably. I don’t know, you’ll let me know if you think I would want to see it.”

Natasha nods. “Well, when we were perusing it before –”

Skye snorts.

“What?” says Natasha. “What’s so funny?”

“Who says perusing?” Skye asks.

“I do,” says Natasha. She flips through a bunch of pages, then frowns. “I’m not sure you want to read any of this,” she says suddenly. “I – I’m kind of uncomfortable with what I just read.”

It feels like something just crawled up Skye’s back. Anything that discomforts the Black Widow can stay far away from her. “This might not have been the best idea,” says Skye. “If it freaks you out I don’t think I want anything to do with it.” She sighs. “Just one question.”

Natasha nods and flips the book shut. “Shoot.”

“Was there anything about me in there?”

Natasha studies her face for a moment. “Yes,” she says, face blank.

“He said something once,” says Skye, unable to stop herself. No one else, no one who would say anything, anyway, knows about what he said to her. “Ward said he wanted to awaken some sort of darkness in me. Said he wanted to take something,” she bites out. “Something for himself.”

Natasha’s face changes. “That’s the gist of your mentions in here,” says Natasha quietly. “It’s – it’s not pretty.” Something changes in Natasha’s expression again. She looks almost angry. It’s not something Skye ever expected to see on her face. “I wouldn’t have let you in that cell with him had I read that.

“Yeah,” says Skye, “because you can tell me what to do.”

“Nobody could tell you what to do,” laughs Natasha, but that sad smile is still there, “but I would have tried.”

Skye tries to find the words for what she wants to say to Natasha. Something about how when she looks at Natasha, she feels like somebody’s got her back. How she wants to figure out what’s behind Natasha’s eyes. How something about Natasha makes Skye feel like something more might be waiting for her.

Instead, Skye stands up and stumbles a little bit, awkwardly laughing. “Well, uh,” she says. “I’ll see you at home. I think I have things to do.”

“Okay,” says Natasha. “But if you need anything, just let me know. I know today can’t have been easy for you.”

“Nah,” says Skye. “Found out my parents are monsters and that I was born to kill all in one day a couple of months ago. It’s going to be hard for any day to beat that one.”

And she runs out the door.

~~

There’s a handful of half awkward days that follow. Well, they’re awkward for Skye. Natasha seems to be going about her business as usual, stealing cups of coffee out of Skye’s hands in the early mornings, setting an extra glass of water next to Skye’s plate when she’s eating in the living room because she knows Skye will complain for twenty minutes about having to get up to get more before finally caving.

At one point, Natasha starts camping out in Skye’s office, lugging her laptop from room to room, not talking, just being there.

It’s nice, Skye thinks, to have someone there. Skye can’t keep herself from throwing herself down on the couch after dinner, deliberately missing Natasha’s legs under her blanket, and snuggling up.

One night, Natasha rests her feet in Skye’s lap. The next night, she curls up next to Skye. The night after that, Skye curls up next to Natasha.

Skye feels like something’s about to happen. It’s scary and brilliant and so different from how she felt with Ward, or with Miles. It doesn’t feel like she’s on the edge of the cliff, or like she’s falling.

It feels like somebody’s catching her.

They thought they were just about done with the project, when an accidental key shift revealed a massive hole in the system that needed to be entirely reworked, adding another month to the project. From explaining the problem to dealing with Coulson’s blank expression as she tries to explain it wasn’t her fault, the week’s a disaster, and getting home on that Thursday night is all she can hope for. She misses her van – god, does she miss her van. But she has a home now, she tries to remind herself, and her van is snuggly parked in the New York SHIELD underground headquarters’ parking lot, accessible to her whenever she needs it.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean driving it home or driving it anywhere is possible anymore. It has to say hidden, Coulson said. Sensitive intel, Coulson said.

Coulson says many things. Skye disagrees with many of the things Coulson says.

She finally stumbles into her apartment, three floors up and no elevator, the only available place for a price she didn’t choke on.

“Hey,” calls Skye, “I’m home. Which is a weird thing to say, still, because having a home is weird.”

“I know how that feels,” comes Natasha’s voice, but when Skye makes her way into the living room, Natasha’s not there.

“Natasha?” Skye calls. “Where are you?”

“In here,” comes her voice. From the bathroom.

Skye’s had roommates before. Technically. Those roommates always at the orphanage, girls like her who dreamt about finding their parents. They connected over those kinds of things, but when Skye hit eighteen, she was out on her own. Natasha is her first roommate of her adult life.

If Skye is honest, it’s nothing like she had expected.

Natasha’s sitting in Skye’s bathtub. Taking a bath. Entirely naked. Eating Skye’s Cheetos.

“Oh, hey,” says Natasha. Skye should have expected that she doesn’t give a damn about nudity, but this was a whole new ballgame of weird. “Cheeto?”

“You’re eating my Cheetos!” Skye complains. “Those are mine!”

“They were on the table,” says Natasha and…is she pouting? “I didn’t know.”

“If you didn’t buy them,” says Skye, “then they’re mine.”

Natasha just holds up the bag to Skye. “You can have them back.”

Crumbs. There are only crumbs left of Skye’s precious Cheetos. She half wants to cry.

“No,” says Skye. “No, I’m okay.”

She closes the door behind her, and immediately plots her revenge.

The answer, of course, is hacking. She’s Skye – hacking is her primary source of joy. And as much as Natasha tries to pretend she’s ahead of Skye in literally everything she does, there are very few precautions one can take when naked in a bathtub.

Natasha’s passwords, for a spy, are fairly easy to crack. Her birthday reversed, her former middle name, and three exclamation marks is not a hard password to find.

She begins with her SHIELD brand of facebook account. “I eat Skye’s Cheetos in the bathtub because I am an embarrassment to humankind xoxo Gossip Widow,” she types into the status.

There’s a lovely feeling of relief and revenge settling over her shoulders. She doesn’t say anything to Natasha about it, and Natasha leaves to meet Barnes and Barton for drinks, waving goodbye to Skye, not indicating any change in demeanor.

Three hours later, Natasha returns, and Skye gets a text from Jemma saying, “I’m so sorry! Let me know if you need anything. I can bring something over later if you need it. Love you!”

“Oh, shit,” whines Skye.

Her facebook status now reads, “I have been weeping over Bambi’s death for four hours now. Few things hurt me like the death of deer. #leaveBambialone.” The next status reads, “Just found out veal is deer. I HAVE CONSUMED BAMBI. #selfhatred.”

Skye does not use hashtags. Skye finds hashtags appalling.

Skye accidentally started a war with the best spy on earth. “Fuck shittery goddamn shit fuck CRAP,” she shouts.

There’s a giggle from Natasha’s perch in the living room.

“I hate you!” Skye shouts.

“I know!” she hears back. Skye turns off the light in her room and deletes both statuses, posting about stupid spies being stupid and goes to sleep, trying not to think about how she can still hear Natasha laughing from the other room.

~~

When she wakes up the next morning, she walks into the kitchen to find Natasha in nothing but a long sleeved plaid shirt and mussed hair.

Skye’s favorite purple plaid shirt, to be exact.

“W-where did you get that?” she asks.

“Your closet,” is Natasha’s response.

“And you’re wearing it because…?”

Natasha turns to her, and Skye involuntarily bites her lip when she realizes just how high on Natasha’s perfect thighs the shirt skims. Natasha leans up against the sink, an expression like she’s discussing the weather, and says, “I like the banter,” she says, “I really do. But I’m thinking perhaps we could take care of the tension now. And maybe multiple times after that.” She takes a moment. “And have it continue indefinitely.”

“Tension?” Skye asks. Like she hasn’t felt it for the past three weeks Natasha’s been living in her living room. Hell, from the first day she walked into that meeting and saw Natasha in person for the first time.

Natasha sighs. “You are so easy to read, Skye,” she says, and she crowds Skye against the wall. Skye’s heart is beating a million miles a minute. All she wants to do is reach over and touch Natasha, pull her into the bedroom and unbutton that shirt, but leave it on just enough that it’s all over Natasha, that she can see Natasha as Skye’s. “Even easy for a civilian,” she says, her voice low and growling and, god. Skye can’t help it. Her hands go to Natasha’s legs, trailing her fingertips along the hem of the shirt.

“That tension,” says Natasha, and she moves Skye’s hand between Natasha’s legs. There’s no underwear. Skye whimpers and feels like she might literally die.

Fourteen year old Skye is losing her shit. Twenty one year old Skye is about to lose her shit.

Twenty six year old Skye has her hands on Natasha Romanoff and is going to take this one for the fucking team of younger Skye’s.

“Come on,” Natasha whispers in Skye’s ear. “I’ll even keep the shirt on.”

“Oh, fuck yes,” sighs Skye.

Natasha’s got Skye by the collar of her shirt and drags her into Skye’s room, tossing her on the bed.

Natasha crawls over her, straddling Skye’s hips. Skye, right now, is still wearing her pajama top (Hello Kitty, because she is perpetually twelve) and a pair of irrationally purple boxers. Natasha takes Skye’s hands and places them on her hips. “Do you want to unbutton the shirt,” Natasha asks, leaning down to press kisses to Skye’s neck, biting down occasionally in a way that makes Skye squirm, “or should I?”

“I’ll do it,” says Skye and, damn it, she sounds stupidly eager even to her own ears. She reaches up to the top button, her hands shaking a little bit. Natasha’s brow furrows, and she shifts so she’s to the side of Skye instead of on top of her.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “If you don’t want to – “

“Oh, I want to,” says Skye, breathless. “I definitely want to. I just haven’t…With a…” She frowns. “With a girl in a very long time.” She forces herself to chuckle. “There might be new rules and regulations I’m not aware of.”

“That’s all?” Natasha asks. She stretches herself out on the bed next to Skye, long legs curling around Skye’s and the shirt just hardly covering Natasha’s ass. “I can help you out.”

Skye nods. “In that case,” she replies, feeling a little more confident, “maybe you should get on top of me again.”

Natasha grins at her and rolls over on top of Skye, propping herself up on her hands. “So get to it, Agent,” Natasha says and, fuck, that just fucking DOES something to Skye. Her hands are steady now, and she reaches up, unbuttoning the shirt and letting it fall open. She gets an overwhelming urge to touch Natasha, so she tests a brush of her fingertips across Natasha’s breasts under the shirt.

She grins. “Good instincts,” Natasha says. Skye tests out cupping Natasha, glancing her thumbs across her nipples.

She gets a sharp exhale and Natasha’s eyelashes fluttering against her cheeks for her troubles.

“Hmm,” says Skye, “it seems that worked.”

“Uhuh,” replies Natasha. She shifts so she’s pressed up against Skye, and she seals her lips to Skye’s. Lights explode behind Skye’s eyes as Natasha lines her body up against her, licking into Skye’s open mouth and controlling the kiss while Skye just gasps into it.

“Breathe,” whispers Natasha against Skye’s skin.

“Kinda hard to do when I can’t remember how,” Skye says. “Breathing is overrated. Just kiss me again.”

Natasha chuckles and does just that, kissing her and pushing up Skye’s shirt slowly.

“This okay?” Natasha asks.

“Yeah, just – yeah.” Skye’s a little overwhelmed and a little convinced she must be dreaming, and if she is, it’s going to be fap fodder for the rest of her fucking life, because Natasha’s got her hands up Skye’s shirt and her mouth is following and, holy fuck, lips on Skye’s stomach have never felt this amazing.

“Oh, god,” moans Skye, “Oh, how is this happening?”

“Because you’re hot,” murmurs Natasha against Skye’s stomach, “and you think I’m hot, and I know you think I’m hot,” Natasha drags her lips along Skye’s ribs, “and you invited me to live in your apartment for an undisclosed amount of time.” She says something else, but Skye doesn’t actually hear is because Natasha’s lips are now kissing Skye’s nipple and Skye can’t exactly remember her name right now.

She can feel Natasha’s hand come up to cup her other breast, and there’s not very much going through Skye’s mind that’s not falling from her lips, and that extends to, “Holy shit, oh my god, holy shit, oh my god.” Skye, apparently, is not particularly creative.

“You’re okay,” murmurs Natasha, and the vibration from her words is a whole new kind of awesome.

Skye makes a strange, strangled nose.

“Shh,” says Natasha, moving back up and kissing Skye gently. “Sit up.”

Skye does, and pulls her shirt off over her head. It was getting hot in the room, and Skye’s kind of sick of waiting.

“Well, I was going to do that, but okay,” says Natasha, her lips turning up.

“Yeah, well, you were taking too long,” says Skye, and she kneels, leaning forward to pull Natasha into a kiss. Natasha cups the back of Skye’s head and pulls her into her lap. Their bodies press against each other, and Skye has the momentary thought of, “Boobs plus boobs equals squishy,” before she remembers that she’s technically an adult having sex and that she’s about ten years too old to use the word boobs.

Natasha’s hands wind up to pull Skye’s hair from her ponytail, messy and disastrous from sleep, and weaves her fingers through her hair.

When she pulls, just gently, Skye gasps and breaks away from Natasha’s lips, resting her head on Natasha’s shoulder.

As she has been 0 for a million on creative responses, she shouldn’t be surprised when her response is a mildly embarrassing squeak.

“Alright then,” says Natasha, and, in a stunning turn of events, she pushes Skye back on the bed. “Just let me know if anything’s not doing it for you, okay?”

Skye nods from where she lay on the bed, feeling a little vulnerable and a lot turned on as Natasha’s gaze skims her body, her fingertips hooking around Skye’s shorts and dragging them down.

“Okay, the slow thing?” Skye says. “That doesn’t have to happen. Fast is fine. Slow is boring.”

Natasha gives her a look. “You want it fast?” she asks, words careful and deliberate.

Skye props herself up on her elbows. “Please,” she says, “you’ve been dragging this out forever.”

Natasha pouts. “I could always go slower.”

Skye makes an exasperated noise that she’s basically positive would be embarrassing in any other venue. “I should have known you’d be a tease.”

Natasha shrugs. “Yeah, well,” she pulls Skye’s shorts down, inch by inch and so torturously slow it’s driving Skye up the wall, “I’m a spy. Slow and steady work until the big climax at the end.”

“Okay, you’re just reaching for those metaphors, aren’t you.”

Natasha looks up at Skye through her eyelashes. “Am I?”

Skye’s shorts come off fast and fly somewhere near her television, and that’s when Natasha throws Skye’s legs over her shoulder.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” laughs Skye. “Keep it up, I’m not going to stop you.”

“Nah,” says Natasha, pressing small, delicate kisses to Skye’s inner thigh. “I think I’m going to drag this out until you can’t think anymore.”

“I can’t think now.”

“You’re talking,” says Natasha. “That means you can think perfectly fine.” She chuckles, a rush of hot air against Skye’s thigh. “Which isn’t quite where I want you.”

“In that case,” Skye replies, “I’m assuming you’re all talk and no walk, which is really probably kind of embarrassing, because fifteen year old me expected – OKAY THEN.”

Skye closes her eyes and drops her head back as Natasha slowly, agonizingly slowly, drags her tongue across Skye’s center, just far away from anything that would really do it for her.

“Oh, god,” Skye whines.

“Nah,” says Natasha, moving her lips back to Skye’s thigh, “I don’t have the beard.”

“Stop talking and get back to work,” Skye moans, but even when she nudges Natasha with her foot, the stupid spy doesn’t do anything but lazily drag kisses up and down Skye’s thigh.

“You’re the worst,” says Skye, but whatever thought was coming next disappears as Natasha goes back to where Skye wants her, moves her lips and tongue against Skye in a way that’s brand new and so fucking amazing Skye’s probably letting mindless babble fall from her lips.

“There you go,” says Natasha, lifting her head up, “that’s what it sounds like when you’re not thinking.”

“Go back,” Skye pleads, “please?”

“Ooh,” says Natasha, “begging. Even better.”

That’s when Skye’s brain short circuits, her hands gripping at the sheets as Natasha drives her crazy until there’s something magical done to her with Natasha’s tongue that has her shouting Natasha’s name, her back arching off the bed.

Natasha works her gently through her orgasm, only stopping when Skye slumps and her legs fall against Natasha’s back.

“Holy fuck,” Skye gasps.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, crawling lazily up Skye’s body. “I get that a lot.”

“Just – fuck.”

Natasha snorts. “Articulate.” She’s still in Skye’s shirt.

It’s still the hottest thing Skye’s ever seen in her twenty six years, and Skye would do a better job communicating that if she wasn’t so exhausted.

Skye lies there breathing and coming down from it all for a few minutes while Natasha stares at her with this grin on her face.

Eventually, Skye catches her breath. “Lie on your back,” Skye says, and Natasha gives her a look.

“When did you start giving orders?”

“Right now,” says Skye. “Your turn.”

“I like the sound of that.”

Skye’s attempts are a little bit of fumbling and uncertainty, but with Natasha’s suggestions and weirdly clinical advice and direction, she has Natasha flushing red in little time.

She likes the way Natasha’s lips part just slightly, the way she gasps, sharp and loud, right before she’s about to come.

Skye loves the way her name looks on Natasha’s lips when it washes over her.

“Well that was new,” says Skye. “Chalk that one up to beginners luck?”

“Nah,” says Natasha, “I’m calling that unbridled talent.”

Skye preens a little at that comment. “Why, thank you,” she says. “I’ve got a very steep learning curve.”

Natasha rolls them over, pressing Skye to the mattress again and kissing her lazily, her hands threaded through brown hair again.

Skye tilts her head to the side, letting Natasha press light, gentle kisses to her neck.

That’s when she sees that the clock reads nine thirty, a full half hour later than when she was supposed to be at work.

“Natasha,” she says carefully, “we’re extremely late.”

“Nah,” she says, “I called us both out. We’ve got the morning off. I made up some hacker meeting to keep us from getting in trouble.”

“That’s presumptuous,” Skye replies.

Natasha looks at her, and, god, she’s still wearing Skye’s favorite shirt. It still looks so, so good on her.

“It really wasn’t,” Natasha replies. “I knew how you’d react when you saw me in your shirt.”

“How?” says Skye.

Natasha chuckles. “I’m a spy, remember?”

~~~

“You look pleased this afternoon,” says Jemma, and there’s something in her eyes that immediately worries Skye.

“What’s that look?” Skye asks. “That’s a Jemma look. That’s a concerning look. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Someone updated your status with something extremely interesting,” she says, and, fuck, Skye is going to be forced to kill Natasha soon. Preferably with a lot of orgasms and maybe with her shirt on again.

Skye groans and drops her head against the wall. “This is apparently what I get for sleeping with a fucking superhero,” she grumbles.

Jemma shrugs, and her completely blasé tone makes Skye wonder if this whole thing with Natasha was obvious to everyone else before it was obvious to her. Probably. Skye misses a lot of social signals sometimes.

And when it comes to Natasha, no one can figure her out unless she wants them to.

“If it helps,” Jemma pats Skye on the shoulder, “Agent Barnes says Natasha’s really skilled with her tongue.”

Skye opens her eyes and stares at Jemma. “Okay, first of all,” she says, “how the fuck would that come up in conversation? Second of all, I am already extremely aware of that, thank you.”

Jemma’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s more information than facebook told me,” she says, her voice a little small. “My gosh.”

Skye rolls her eyes. “She’s a hair puller too, if you wanted to know that.”

Jemma immediately blushes, and Skye lets herself laugh, because Jemma’s wholesome, pristine kind of decorum is fun to dirty up sometimes, even if it was just that one dirty dream a couple nights ago and the occasional inappropriate comment for her and Tripp. “You are such a…a…”

“Hooligan?” Skye suggests. “Wanton whore? Sexpot?”

“I’d say lunatic, but if that’s what you’d want to call it,” says Darcy.

Skye and Darcy had become fast friends when they realized that their abilities to make any situation both awkward and sexual coincided in a way that almost blew up the sensible minds of the SHIELD director and his friends.

They once teamed up to make Maria Hill blush. It took forty five minutes, a conversation on honeypots, and a detailed diagram Darcy had had Steve doodle out for her. It cost them a two hour lecture by Coulson on appropriate office conduct, but they spent that time passing notes under the desk, so it didn’t matter.

“Can it, Lewis, and get me a coffee.”

“Hey!” Darcy exclaims. “I’m a scientists intern, not a bratty hacker intern. Go get it yourself.”

“Speaking of which,” says Jemma, “Darcy, dear, did you talk to Jane about the chemical properties of that Asgardian metal yet?”

“No,” says Darcy. “But I can now.”

Jemma sighs. “No problem. We can both go.” She turns to Skye. “Will you be fine in your post-Widow recovery or do you need further babysitting?”

Skye waves them off. “Nah, I’m good,” she says. “Gotta get to work at some point.”

She walks down the hallway to the office where she works, the fake sunset of the underground headquarters looking entirely out of place.

Which is when she realizes it should be showing something akin to 9am.

“What the hell?” she says quietly, and checks out the screen.

Only for it to turn to a picture of Natasha wearing Skye’s shirt and, again, nothing else.

“Jesus Christ!” Skye shouts, and she tries to cover it up. She shrugs off her coat and drapes it over the fake window, hoping no one can see it from outside her little cubicle.

Whoever thought Skye would be working in an office with Natasha Romanoff’s mostly naked body adorning the wall before she hit 30?

Nobody. That is the only answer.

Literally nobody.

She pulls her laptop out of her back and opens it, giving it time to load all the SHIELD anti virus and encoding programs she’d designed for the company. She can’t keep herself from smiling – it’s the first project she and Natasha worked on together, and, despite the fact that it’s hardly working, it will probably harbor some extremely wonderful nostalgia for the rest of her life.

She’s working on trying to hack SHIELD’s former Hydra-infiltrated defense system, trying to establish if there’s any problems still lurking, when there’s a knock and a strangled shriek at her door.

“Knocking would have worked just fine,” she says. “What’s with the squeaking?”

Trip looks up and nods to the picture. Fitz is averting his eyes.

Skye dreads looking up to see that her coat has fallen, because she’s sure that’s the problem and she’s really, really, not up for that discussion.

And sure enough, that’s the picture showing.

Or, something like it. Apparently Natasha got it to scroll through a bunch of pictures Skye never knew had been taken.

There’s a particularly interesting one of a beetle and a pine tree, but Skye assumes that one’s a glitch.

“Don’t act like you’ve never seen a naked girl before,” says Skye with an eye roll. “Unless you haven’t, in which case, um, I apologize for stealing that opportunity.”

“I have to assume that wasn’t your fault,” says Fitz, covering his eyes. “Um, I was wondering if I could talk to you about that processor functioning device that we were discussing? It’s broken again.”

“Fitz,” says Skye, “if you broke your blender again, you can just tell me you broke your blender.”

He stares at her. “Thanks, Skye, I was trying not to seem like an idiot.”

Tripp claps him on the shoulder. “No matter, bud, idiot’s never really being something I’ve imagined for you.”

Fitz throws him a look – Skye’s still not sure why Fitz is harping on it so much – and then turns back to Skye.

“So why’s Tripp here?” Skye asks. “I mean, if this was about your ‘processing device’ or whatever you said, he’s got no reason to be here.”

“Dr. Foster’s got a prototype concept for the deflecting device,” he says, “she was wondering if you could be present for the initial creation.”

“What’s that have to do with me?” Skye asks.

“She wants to make sure no other radio waves can hack into it while it’s working.”

“So she wants me to hack it while it’s on,” Skye says. “I’m a one trick pony, it seems.”

Fitz snorts. “Not according to facebook.”

Skye throws her coat at him.

~~

“So who’s getting shot at today?” Skye asks, tossing herself into a chair. “Do I get to try and hack into Barnes’ arm again? Because that was simultaneously the greatest and most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. I’d like to do it again.”

Darcy snorts into her coffee and spills it on the floor, but Dr. Foster just sighs. “Not this time,” she says. “Agents Romanoff, Triplett, and Wilson will be involved in the initial test drive.”

“Awesome,” says Skye. Already she’s got visions of hacking into the radio controls of Sam’s wings to get him to flap around like a flying monkey.

“The wings aren’t involved this time, you little menace, so don’t even try,” says Sam. He pulls a little bit, very first grade boy, on her ponytail, and shoots her a grin. “But I appreciate your creativity.”

“You’re only making an attempt to hijack the signal for the deflector that controls how intense the absorption frequency is,” says Jane, ever the professional, “nothing else. We need to see if the deflector can be used as a weapon.”

“And that would entail?”

“Ooh!” says Darcy. “Can I answer this one?”

Jane sighs, long suffering yet fond. “Yeah, Darce. Go ahead.”

“We’re worried that with laser shit and magical stuff and lightning, someone could make it, like, absorb those powers and, like shoot ‘em at other people. Just imagine Sam shooting lightning out of his pecs.”

“I’m assuming the pecs are not the concern,” says Sam, frowning.

“Not at all,” says Darcy, and Jane and Skye simultaneously whack her on the arm as she completely blatantly checks Sam out.

“What?” says Darcy. “I’m allowed to look.”

Sam shrugs. “She is.”

Skye debates asking what’s going on, because this kind of thing has been happening a lot lately and she doesn’t know how to handle it.

“So I basically am just looking to see if I can intercept the frequency?” Skye asks. “Child’s play.”

Jane scoffs. “Okay, fine,” she says with an eye roll. “Fitz, get them set up, alright? I want your tech working perfectly.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Fitz and he salutes her. Skye’s pretty sure he has a Thor-sized crush on Jane. She’s also pretty sure he’d kill her if she mocked him for it.

She’s going to mock him for it when he gets back.

Natasha fits herself into a little corner she’s claimed for herself whenever they make her do the Hacking Monkey tricks, and sets up her laptop.

“Alright,” she says, pressing in her ear piece and turning on the coms, “ready when you are, people.”

“I’m good,” says Tripp. “And before we start, can I get a question?”

“Go for it, Tripp,” says Jane. “What’s up?”

“Just wanted to know who’s shooting at me.”

All of a sudden, two cackling laughs ring throughout the training field. Skye sits up from her bench, peers out the observation window, and sees Agent Barnes and Agent Barton chuckling from this really unsteady perch.

“Oh,” says Tripp. “Great.”

Clint starts singing, “One Way or Another,” and Bucky makes pew-pew noises with his fingers.

“One of these days,” Sam mutters in the coms, “I will get that metal armed bastard back for wrecking my wings.”

Natasha rests her hand on Sam’s shoulder and grabs Tripp’s arm, turning them toward her, and they all cover their coms. Natasha’s got her sly little grin, and Skye’s almost positive this is about to be a little bit more than a standard tech testing.

“What do you think they’re saying?” Darcy asks, peering over at the group.

“Probably some devious scheme involving Natasha taking down Tweedles Purple and Metal using the boys as distracto-beams,” says Skye, with a shrug. “Or they’re talking about how much you and Sam want to bang and you two can’t confront it yet.”

“You two realize you’re still on coms, right?” asks Barton.

“Tweedle Metal,” says Barnes, “that’s a new one.”

Darcy whacks Skye on the arm with her clipboard.

“Ready to can it, people?” Jane asks, looking frustrated. “Because there are things to do, and if they aren’t done, somebody’s getting tased.” Darcy starts searching in her pockets.

It’s a little startling to see how quickly everyone gets in their places.

“Alright,” says Fitz, “devices are all stable.” He stumbles up the stairs. “I’m actually fairly proud of them, I think we could really – ”

“Sit down,” says Jane firmly. “And let’s get started.”

It takes Skye eight seconds to interfere with the feed from Jane’s computer down to the deflector, and about forty-five to make the first deflector just stop working.

Unfortunately, the deflector in question is worn by Sam Wilson, and he gets pelted in the now-not working chest deflector with three rubber bullets in a row. He goes down.

“Get up, Wilson!” snaps Darcy. “We’ve got an evil organization to take down, and you’re napping on the job!”

“Shut up, Lewis,” Sam says, voice a little strained, but he says it with such a smile that Skye is convinced the two of those idiots are probably going to be doing it before the day is over.

Skye ignores this, watching Sam drag himself to the corner sullenly, and watches Natasha literally skip around as the deflection absorbs the force of the bullets and has them drop to the ground.

“Having fun with this, Nat?” Barnes snickers. “Because I’m going to keep shooting until your girl hacks your system.”

Skye’s elbow didn’t slip because he said that. Skye’s elbow slipped because she’s in a flannel shirt, and they are slippery against treated wood.

In retaliation, she hacks Barnes’ arm just enough to cause the motion sensors to make it feel like the arm is constantly vibrating.

“Did you just – Skye, did you -?” He holds up the gun again, and it shakes in his hands. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Skye chuckles. “Looks like you’ve lost your edge, Barnes.”

Skye, as she works on tapping into Tripp’s and Natasha’s deflectors simultaneously (because that’s at least a little bit of a challenge), peeks over at Jane, Fitz, and Jemma, who all look a few too many kinds of exasperated. “What’s up, guys?” she asks.

“All three of them,” says Fitz, “you had about thirteen seconds before you hacked into the deflectors.”

“It was closer to a minute,” Skye says apologetically.

“Whatever,” says Fitz, “just means I need to do better next time. Simmons?”

“Yes?”

“Is there any way that amplifying the defense mechanism to reject outside attacks could harm the person wearing the device?”

Skye frowns. “There was a defense mechanism?”

They talk over her. “If there’s too much going on in the system, there could be radioactive runoff. It’s a little bit of a risk.”

Fitz huffs. “Well, then it’s good our next test subjects are super soldiers.”

“God damn it,” grumbles Barnes. Skye looks up and grins when she notices that his arm is still subtly vibrating. She hacks in and stops it. “Okay, thanks for that, Skye, but you’re testing it on me? Seriously?”

“And Thor,” adds Jane, “and Captain Rogers. You three are the closest to being biological humans as we can get without damaging the body.”

“Was this dangerous?” Sam asks. “Because none of the three of us have had anything to do with serums or programming or prosthetic robotic appendages.”

“Well I’m pretty familiar with robotic appendages,” and as Natasha says that she winks up into the booth, looking exactly where Skye was sitting.

Skye snorts. “Good one,” she says.

As if they all get the joke one by one, people start groaning around the room.

That’s when Jane grabs Simmons and Fitz, pulls them into their lab, and slams the door. “I am finished with all of you,” she snaps through the coms. “I’ve got work to do and these two are the only ones being in any way productive, so everybody else can just leave.”

“I’ve been productive,” says Skye.

She’s rewarded with a bit of a shock as the coms short out.

“I’m thinking we messed up,” says Darcy, “and by we I mean you.”

“All I did was what they asked!” says Skye.

Everybody’s out of the room before Skye can close her laptop.

~~

She flops down at her desk, dropping her head into her hands. “Why,” she says quietly, “why do I spend my life confused?”

She stays there for a while, trying to figured out what happened in there and if Darcy was just messing with her, or if she really was the one to mess up.

She groans.

“She’s just frustrated, Skye,” comes a voice, and Skye jumps half a foot in the air. She turns to see Darcy, arms folded over her bizarre argyle print vest, and a smirk. “I thought you took me seriously. People should stop taking me seriously unless I’m being serious.”

Skye laughs. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell, Darcy,” she says quietly.

“Oh, come on,” Darcy sighs, and she drops to the floor, stretching out on the carpet with her arms supporting her head. “You did you job. Jane did her job. Barnes and Barton are two big ass buckets of jerk sometimes, but they did their jobs, and so did everyone else. Jane just gets pissy when someone beats her at her own game.”

“She’s not going to take it out on Fitz or Simmons, right?” Skye asks.

Darcy snorts. “Please. The last time she tried to take anger out on someone I flicked her in the ear, told her to shove it up her ass, and walked out of the room with my middle finger up.” She turns to Skye. “And that’s just because she called me an idiot. She’s not going to mess with the science kids.”

“You’re a science kid,” Skye says.

Darcy shrugs. “And so are you. The problems with being youths.”

Skye laughs again, feeling a little better.

Darcy rolls, sitting up, and sighs. “Are you done being self-loathing? Because I need to go back and help Jane before I get in trouble for…something.”

Skye rolls her eyes and nods. “I’m good,” she says. “Got some sort to do here first, but I’m good.”

Darcy hops to her feet. “Later, alligator,” she says, and she closes the door behind her.

For the rest of the afternoon, Skye alternates between hacking people’s facebook pages and finishing up some of the easier loopholes. She realizes that, because a lot of the problems are identical, and just appearing in different areas of the system, one solution will be able to fix most of their problems.

She tries out a few things, and on the fifth try, she strengthens the supports and protection for, not only the places that needed it, but the whole system.

She falls back in her chair. “Well that was convenient,” she grumbles. All that worrying for nothing, it seemed. And something like this on a Friday? Pretty good.

Somebody knocks on the door, and Skye says, “Come in!” as she starts on facebook again.

“Hi,” says Natasha. “I see my photos are up. Do you like them?”

“You’re in my shirt and on my wall,” says Skye from where she’s altering Sam’s facebook page to read that he’s in love with a turkey named Frederick, “of course I liked it.”

“Good,” says Natasha, and something about the way she says it, bright and happy, makes Skye turns around.

The Black Widow is beaming at her.

“That’s quite the smile for being at work,” says Skye. “What are you, high or something?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Just a little pleased with our arrangement,” she says softly, “that’s all.”

“Arrangement,” says Skye, turning in her chair. Natasha settles in her lap. “You mean this is ongoing?”

Natasha shrugs. “If you want it to be.”

“Oh,” says Skye, and she doesn’t need long to come up with an answer. “Ongoing is definitely a thing I wouldn’t mind.”

“Good,” says Natasha softly, and she presses a little kiss to Skye’s lips.

When she pulls away, there’s a vulnerability in her eyes that Skye’s never seen in anyone before.

Something snaps in the atmosphere.

“Well then,” says Natasha, brushing off imaginary dust from her office wear (this time it’s dress pants and a blouse instead of yoga pants and a tank), “I’ll see you at home?”

Skye nods, and it’s only when Natasha’s out of the room that she realizes Natasha called it home.

~~

Skye texts Natasha at six when everyone else leaves, because there’s one stupid bug she can’t decode and she’s not leaving until she gets it. Getting that big problem condensed into one easily solvable problem motivated her to finish this project as soon as she could.

Instead of a response, she gets Natasha dragging in a plastic chair from god knows what conference room and folding herself onto it.

“Hello,” says Skye carefully. “I have work to do.”

“I can wait,” says Natasha, and the smile’s so earnest and eager that Skye’s actually a little concerned about what she could possibly be so earnest and eager about.

“It’s going to be a while.”

Natasha shrugs. “That’s okay.”

“You’re literally going to be sitting on that chair doing nothing for an undisclosed amount of time until I’m done,” says Skye. “Is that your idea of a fun Friday night?”

Natasha holds up her phone. “It’s okay. I’ve got 2048.”

Skye’s got a million things running in her head. She’s mostly confused, a little turned on, and a lot unfocused, but she forces herself to get back to work.

Natasha’s silent except for little frustrated exhales and excited little chirps. Skye assumes it has something to do with the game she’s playing, but has a feeling that, if she’d asked, Natasha would go off on a rant about its properties and necessary strategies, and Skye doesn’t think she’d be able to follow that conversation.

It’s ten thirty when Skye’s finally cracked the bug – and it was good she did. The data was programmed to detonate a virus within forty eight hours of its discovery, expecting that it would be found by either someone who knew the password or someone who wouldn’t know how to disable and destroy it.

Skye feels oddly proud that she’s neither of those categories and is instead just kind of awesome.

“Natasha,” she says quietly, sure she’s fallen asleep in the char.

She’s wrong. Natasha’s still working at her phone, but her head lifts when Skye says her name.

“Ready to go?” Natasha asks.

Skye nods, still a little bewildered. “I gotta ask,” Skye blurts out before she can think, “why are you waiting for me? I gave you a key – you could have gone home hours ago.”

Natasha shrugs. “I wanted to spend time with you.”

“I’ve been sitting here swearing at a computer for four straight hours while you played 2048,” says Skye. “I forgot you were here, I was so focused.”

“That’s okay,” says Natasha. “I just didn’t want to be alone.”

It’s in that very moment that Skye realizes just how little she knows about Natasha Romanoff and her past. Before this, her assumption would have been that Natasha would rather be alone on a regular basis, but apparently that analysis was extremely wrong.

Skye nods and closes the desk top, packs away her things, and stands to leave. In a moment of inexplicable daring, Skye holds out her hand to Natasha.

There’s a brief hesitation, like Natasha’s trying to figure out what Skye’s doing to it, but eventually she takes it.

She even swings their hands for a little bit, like she’s testing out what it feels like.

“You know,” she says lightly, “I don’t think I’ve ever held hands with someone like this before.”

“You don’t think you did?” Skye asks.

Natasha shrugs. “There’s a lot of me that I don’t know about.”

Skye’d never tell Natasha, but that little admission nearly breaks her heart.

There’s something to be said about walking home hand in hand with a lethal assassin. There’s something even more to be said about walking home hand in hand with a lethal assassin when a handful of dirtbags outside a bar call them, “Dumb sluts,” and she shouts something so obscenely awesome Skye can’t even remember all the words by the time they get home.

Skye doesn’t even say anything when she comes out of the shower and Natasha’s in a pair of sleep shorts and a giant SHIELD logo shirt, curled up with a book in Skye’s bed.

“Hi,” says Skye. “You staying here tonight?”

Natasha doesn’t even look up from her book when she says, “If you let me.”

Skye answers by curling up next to Natasha and says, “Read to me. I’m sleepy.”

That tears her eyes away from the book. “It’s about Russian/German cooperation during the very beginning of World War II and its implications on the start of the Cold War, focusing predominantly on the repercussions of the leaders’ decisions.”

Skye blinks. “Alright,” she says slowly, “I don’t see how that wouldn’t make me sleepy, though.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, but she lets Skye snuggle up closer and wrapping an arm around Skye’s shoulders.

“When Hitler first came to power, it was by appointment, not by – ”

Skye’s eyes flutter closed by the time Natasha finishes the first sentence, and she dreams of Hitler and Stalin slow dancing to Elton John.

~~

The next week is a flurry of Natasha, completing the project, and a whole lot of facebook wars. The weekend is spent learning that Natasha’s got a thing for back massages, which turn into much more interesting events, which lead to the upstairs neighbors Skye’s never met before knocking on her door and asking them to be quiet.

Skye also finds out that Natasha curls around whomever she’s sleeping next to, that she whimpers a little in her sleep. She learns a little Russian, words like, “no” and “please” and “let her go,” which are burned into her mind because Natasha murmurs them as she sleeps. She also learns that murmuring whatever Skye can come up with into Natasha’s ear when she looks like the dreams turn even worse calms her, allows her to wake in a way that isn’t brutal or harsh.

One night, Natasha’s curled around herself in the desk chair Skye keeps in the corner next to a desk she’s never used, staring down at a photograph on her desk. Skye’s coming in from a shower, scrubbing at her hair, and she begins talking before she senses the atmosphere in the room.

“Natasha?” she says quietly. “Is everything okay?”

Her head snaps up and she looks like the Black Widow for the first time Skye’s been living with her. Sharp actions, steely eyes, and an expression deadly. She says something in Russian, and Skye drops the towel in her hand in the middle of drying her hair.

“Natasha?” she says slowly. “What’s – you’re not in Russia anymore.”

There seems to be half-recognition in her eyes, something kind of danger that Skye fears. “You are…?” says Natasha, but her voice is thickly accented, sounding Russian and hard to understand.

Skye swallows. They haven’t talked about this. Skye knows about the Black Widow only what others have told her, only knows that she used to work for the KGB and then transferred to SHIELD, monitoring Stark and working with Hawkeye as needed. Skye takes a moment to breathe. “You are Natasha Romanoff,” she says slowly, quietly. “You are at 514 Marlborough Avenue, in New York City. I’m Skye. I’m –” But her sentence ends there, because who really is she, to Natasha? “I’m your friend,” she settles on.

“How do I know you?” Natasha demands. “How am I with you?”

Skye frowns. “We work together,” Skye says carefully. “You live in my apartment, because you used to live with the Avengers, who you basically had to babysit, because they’re all idiots.” Skye can’t stop talking, every stupid thing Barton’s done, everything Barnes has said in a lame attempt to make her roll her eyes, every time Steve Rogers has opened a door for them and Natasha whacked him in the arm for it. She recounts all of it. She recounts the moments she feels safest, the time Skye fell asleep in Natasha’s arms while Natasha was reading her the Chronicles of Narnia.

She tells her everything.

By the time all ideas are exhausted, by the time she’s explained her time working out that day because she couldn’t find Natasha, and Captain Rogers finally taught her how to do a cartwheel, Natasha’s slid down to the floor, curled into a ball.

“Skye?” she says, sounding young and vulnerable.

Skye exhales in relief, the fears that Natasha was just gone ebbing away. “Yeah,” Skye says, smile. “Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”

Natasha, looking a little confused, nods. “I just…” She closes her eyes firmly, and takes five, six, fifteen deep breaths. Skye counts all of them. “Something triggered James today,” she says quietly. “Some kind of signal. And I was fine until he said it.”

Skye doesn’t ask what ‘it’ is. She knows a little about how Natasha and Barnes were together.

He’d known her trigger phrase.

“But you came back here,” says Skye, “even triggered like that, you came back here.”

Natasha nods, laughing a little, then looks up at Skye. “Yeah,” she says, her smile small but sure, “yeah, I guess I did.”

Skye doesn’t react at all, but something moves and swells in her heart.

Natasha looks at the desk and pulls the photo off it, smiling sadly. “I had a little brother,” she says quietly, “I didn’t remember him, not until SHIELD and Clint got me out, but…” She hands the photo to Skye. “This is him. It would be his birthday today.”

He’s a cute little boy, all teeth in a big smile, and it looks like Natasha’s the one whose arms are around him.

She can’t be more than four in the picture, and him no more than two.

“I never saw him again,” she says quietly. “When my parents died, they…They just took me. Not him.” She shrugs and stands. “But that’s over now.”

Skye won’t ask if she ever found him again, because she knows that if Natasha had, he’d be with her in New York right now, and this may never have happened.

“Time for bed?” Natasha asks quietly, but she doesn’t wait for an answer, just curls up in bed, and snuggles into Skye when she joins.

~~

The next morning, Natasha is quiet but calm, and breakfast is accompanied by a kiss on Skye’s forehead and a cup of coffee. They don’t talk much, but they don’t need to.

They reach work, and, now that their project has concluded, Natasha is needed for other missions.

Skye tries not to think of how hard it will be, knowing she might be fighting where Skye can’t keep up with her.

She pushes the thoughts away as she starts on a new program, something she came up with and designed, a screening test for children in homes without parents, who never knew who they were.

Skye knows this could have been helpful for her. Learning, a year before, that she was the child of supernatural hired killers who had had a child to raise as a new weapon?

Yeah, that was something rough to learn in her mid twenties. Protecting a child like that before they hit adulthood, raising them in an environment that would keep them safe and teach them how to use their special abilities was something Skye needed to do.

And Coulson agreed.

She’s working on an algorithm that would predict, from recorded behaviors and notable events in a child’s life, whether or not they could be supernatural, when there’s a strong knock at the doorway.

She turns in her chair and calls, “Come in!”

Steve Rogers, all six and a bit feet and two hundred glorious pounds of him, walks in.

“Hi, Captain Rogers,” says Skye, eyeing him warily. “What brings you to my very embarrassingly nonsuper neck of the headquarters?”

“Can I come in?” he asks.

She stares at him. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, Cap, but, uh,” she gestures to the walls, sweeping her hands above the very short walls, “there’s not much privacy in this place.”

He shrugs. “No problem. I just – I need to talk to you.”

Skye’s hands go in the air. “Darcy told you from the beginning of the arrangement that no feelings on her end were going to happen,” she begins. “If you’ve got feelings, she’s gonna ditch. She’s not into the whole love aspect. She doesn’t do that.” Skye feels very proud of herself that she gave exactly the speech Darcy told her to give – short, sweet, to the point, and very Darcy.

Steve laughs. “Yeah, no, this isn’t about Darcy,” he replies. “But, uh, good to know you have her back.” He sighs. “It’s about Natasha.”

Skye groans and rolls her whole head instead of her eyes, because apparently this shit doesn’t get through superskulls. “Look, dude, if you’ve got feelings –”

“I don’t have feelings!” exclaims Steve, and it’s so ridiculous, to see Captain America, who moons over Agent Barnes like he’s watching the stars for the first time, scream about how he doesn’t have feelings in the middle of the SHIELD headquarters, that Skye falls on the ground laughing.

“I’m sorry!” she chokes out. “I’m sorry, I wish I could stop laughing. But I can’t.”

“This isn’t a joke,” Steve says, trying to maintain composure, but suddenly he’s laughing and falling on the ground too.

If someone, a two years ago, right before all of this started, told Skye that she’d be in an office job laughing her ass off with Captain Fucking America in her cubical, she would have called the cops.

However, if they’d added that Agent Barnes, who had up until recently been extremely dead, and up until even more recently been giving Skye the finger as she hacked into his metal arm and made him smack his own ass or made it vibrate uncontrollably, would catch them on the floor and call them, “Goddamned fools,” she’d be even more concerned.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve chokes out. “I was trying to tell Skye not to break Natasha’s heart and then I yelled something stupid and fell over laughing.”

Bucky sighs and gives Steve a look like he wants to haul him off and set him somewhere where he couldn’t hurt himself. “How are you an American hero again?” Bucky asks.

“It’s kind of my fault,” says Skye. “I’m sleeping with Natasha and apparently that means Steve has to protect her honor or something.”

Bucky snorts and Steve looks horrified. “Do not tell her that’s what I came here to do,” Steve says seriously. “Because it’s not. I came here to tell you to be careful with her because she pretends she can’t get hurt but she can.”

Skye frowns, thinking back to how closed Natasha was by the time she had come back from that trigger. She hadn’t said anything more about it to Skye, hadn’t even told Skye her brother’s name. “Cap, no offense, but she’s never even made it seem like she wants this to be more than a friends with benefits thing.” She pauses. “Roommates with benefits. I don’t know. I feel like she’ll tell me if and when she decides on something else.”

That’s when Captain freaking America and James Barnes, the Winter freaking Soldier, sigh in tandem. “That’s kind of a problem with her,” says Barnes. “Spends her whole life avoiding feelings and then, boom, feelings happen and then she ignores them until it’s too late.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at Bucky, who rolls his eyes. “Don’t start with that again, Rogers,” says Barnes. “Don’t even start.”

“See?” Steve says, turning to Skye. “That’s just the kind of attitude of not talking about things that makes people wait ninety years before they make a move.”

Barnes just sighs.

Skye is seriously wondering why she’s expected to take advice from the two of them. “So you’re telling me to make feelings happen from the start so she has to deal with them, so neither of us wait ninety years?” Skye asks. “Who are you people?”

“Confused,” says Barnes.

“Old,” says Rogers.

Skye groans. “This is who I’ve chosen to associate with.”

Barnes shrugs. “All I’m gonna say is don’t mess with her feelings, alright?”

“Of course not,” Skye replies. “I’m…” she sighs. “She came home yesterday.”

Rogers frowns. “Came home?”

Barnes turns to him. “Yesterday,” he says. “When the Winter Soldier got triggered, it apparently had the trigger word to reactivate a Black Widow operative who had been shut down.”

Rogers’ face fell. “Oh, Bucky…” he says slowly, but Barnes just holds up a hand to stop him.

“No, Steve, I’m over it,” he says, then turns to Skye. “What I’m more interested in is what Skye did to bring Natasha back. Coulson and I were worried all night that she’d gone somewhere else, and now to hear that you got her back?” He scoffs. “Well. That shouldn’t have been possible.”

Skye shrugs. “I guess I just started talking, and then eventually…” She shrugs again, because that seems to make more sense to her than talking at the moment. “I don’t know, she came back. Told me about her little brother.”

“Nat has a brother?” Barnes asks, looking startled.

Skye frowns. “Yeah,” she says. “You didn’t know that?”

The two men exchange a look that clearly says they didn’t.

“Look,” says Skye, “I’m not going to hurt her. She lives with me, and I –” The words get stuck in her throat. She doesn’t know how she feels about Natasha. Just that it’s something she hasn’t felt for a very long time. “I want her to be happy.”

Rogers smiles. “Good,” he says. “Now, Agent!” he says, pretending like he wasn’t a goofball laughing on the floor a few minutes before. “Back to work.”

Skye chuckles. “Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Captain’s orders.”

~~

She’s not sure, but she thinks that’s the start of Rogers and Barnes being around her All The Time.

The next day they drag Skye and Natasha to lunch at this Japanese restaurant where Barnes orders for them once Skye complains that she can’t read the menu and is not fluent in six languages like other SHIELD agents are, and Rogers buys lunch for all of them without even letting them try. That Thursday, the two of them drag Natasha and Skye to a movie about two dying teenagers. Skye is entirely unimpressed, but Barnes is crying at the end of it and she doesn’t even react when he grabs her hand and squeezes when the girl is crying over the boy’s death.

So Skye probably should have expected it when the two of them show up at Skye’s apartment on Saturday night, dressed in the most outrageous outfits she’s ever seen, and proclaim, “We’re going dancing!”

Natasha says, “Alright, but not until I’m done showering,” and Skye just stares, unsure when this happened.

“Is Darcy coming?” she asks.

Rogers scoffs. “She and Sam are already there.”

“Alright,” she says, “Cap.”

That’s when Rogers rolls his eyes with more intensity than she’s ever seen. “For the love of god, call me Steve,” he grumbles.

“And stop calling me Agent Nerd,” Barnes says. “My name’s James.”

So when she goes out dancing and ends up sandwiched between him and Natasha, she starts to think about him as James.

And also starts thinking of him and Steve as strangely good dancers.

When they’re in a meeting, all the SHIELD agents Coulson deems necessary (which includes Skye), Steve sits down next to Skye and grins at her, saying, “Hi,” like they’ve done it their whole lives.

And B-James sits on her other side, poking her in the arm whenever she’s dozing off to keep her from falling asleep during the meeting.

Natasha, from the other side of the table, watches them like a hawk, and Skye has no idea what’s going through her head.

But she finds out toward the end of the day, after the meeting, when Skye’s working at her desk.

Natasha’s stopped knocking when she enters Skye’s cubicle, just saunters in saying, “I was thinking…”

Skye laughs, not turning around. “That’s always dangerous.”

Natasha rests her chin on top of Skye’s head. “I like it when you’re sitting,” she says, “you’re littler when you’re sitting.”

“You just like it because you like to feel tall,” chuckles Skye. “And I’ll take the bait. What were you thinking about?”

“We should ask Steve and Bucky to have a big ol’ foursome.”

“Yeah, okay,” says Skye. Then the words hit her. “Wait, did you just say what I think you said?”

“I said we should ask Steve and Bucky –”

“I heard what you said,” says Skye, reeling a little bit. “I just don’t think I understood it.”

Natasha shrugs. “Barnes is a fucking powerhouse in bed. I can only imagine how Steve gets.” Skye turns to see Natasha looking thoughtful. “He’s probably rough. I bet he likes to pin Barnes to the bed.” She lights up. “I bet they use handcuffs.”

“Is this where your mind goes when you’re left alone?” Skye squeaks. “Because that is an incredibly weird place for your mind to go and I’m not sure how to react to it.”

“Would it make you feel better if I told you I was kidding?” Natasha asks.

“I suppose,” Skye responds, tilting her head to the side to let Natasha work at her neck. “We should mess with them tomorrow.”

Natasha chuckles. “That could be fun.”

Skye just nods and forgets about it, which is probably the number one stupidest thing she’s ever done, but there’s not much time for her to realize that.

They head home quickly, and Natasha doesn’t bring it up again – at least, not until after she’s kissing Skye hard.

Natasha has her flat on her back in seconds and, while Natasha kisses down her stomach, Skye can’t really help herself from imagining just how that whole scenario might go. Steve pressing her against the wall while Natasha goes down on her and Bucky whispers things in her ear and, oh, god, this fantasy is going in about eight different, awesome, directions.

“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you,” murmurs Natasha against Skye’s thighs, and there’s no reason for Skye to lie, because Natasha can read her like a fucking book.

“So what if I am?” Skye responds, arching a little off the bed as Natasha’s mouth inches closer and closer to her center.

“Hmm,” Natasha responds, “I’m just a bit interested, that’s all.”

~~

Skye’s concerned she’s made a mistake in admitting she was thinking, because the next day she walks into the sparring room and Natasha’s got a grin like a demonic cat.

“Skye,” she says, stepping up to her. Skye knows something’s up because Natasha is an open, sexy, book when she chooses to be, and the something’s probably her stupid idea. “Skye, remember what we talked about last night?”

Skye’s eyes dart over to where Steve and James are sparring, rough and strong and, shit, she’s thinking about it again. “Kinda hard to forget when the people in question are doing superhero foreplay right behind you.” Skye swallows hard.

“I’d hoped you’d say that,” says Natasha, and she skips – literally skips – over to the boys, until she seems to just decide on doing a couple of back handsprings and a flip, landing primly next to the two of them while Skye ambles up behind her, feeling like a mammoth or perhaps the Hulk. “Hey, boys,” says Natasha. “Skye and I have a question for you.”

Skye stares at her. “I didn’t know you meant now,” she says from the corner of her mouth.

Steve and Bucky pause from where they’re fighting and fall into a relaxed stance, still closer to each other than people normal are. Steve’s hand is brushing the back of James’s metal arm, and that realization sends a whole new, very interesting, line of questions through Skye’s mind.

“We were wondering if you wanted to have a hot as hell foursome,” says Natasha, and Skye’s so startled she half falls over. “You know, three superheroes on one little nonenhanced agent.” She winks. “It’ll be hot.”

Skye makes an embarrassing choking sound because, yeah, that does sound hot, and now she’s half wishing they weren’t joking because this is something that she’ll never be able to erase from her mind.

James and Steve look at each other, that weird little way they can communicate through expression that Skye’s never understood. “Sure,” says Steve lightly.

“We’re always up for more freaks in the sheets,” says James, and he winks at her, actually winks, and something like being stripped down washes over Skye. “As long as hacker chick over here doesn’t short circuit my fuckin’ arm again.”

“Can’t make any promises,” says Skye, testing out a response.

Natasha, on the other hand, is staring them down. “Oh my god,” she says, “neither of you are kidding.”

“Why would we be kidding?” Steve says and, oh, fuck, he’s NOT kidding. He’s got that annoying Captain America ‘I’m honest and real’ kind of look that simultaneously turns Skye on and irritates her.

What the fuck is happening to her in this place?

“It’s not like we haven’t done it before,” says James, looking directly at Natasha, “but the newbie would be an interesting addition.”

Natasha looks at Skye. “Is this what it feels like to be shocked?” she asks. “Because I’m, like, actually surprised right now.” She stares at the two men in front of her. “Oh my god, is this what it feels like to be normal?”

“We didn’t think this through,” says Skye, “they’re totally gonna do it.”

Steve stares at her. “Were you two trying to prank us or something?”

“Started off that way,” mumbles Skye, but it’s not quiet enough. She looks over at James, whose smile is sly and wolfish and, god, Skye can tell that guy’s got all sorts of tricks up his sleeve.

“We’re doing this, aren’t we,” says Skye, deadpan.

That’s when Natasha grabs her by the collar and James by the non-metal arm and drags them out of there.

“You’re just hoping Steve’ll follow?” Skye asks.

“Oh please,” snorts James, “he wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

At some point they’ve all been tossed into a room in Avengers Tower, someplace a little dark and masculine and totally foreign, and Natasha’s already started pulling her shirt off.

She pauses when she realizes nobody else is joining in. “What?” she asks. “You’re making me do foreplay.” She groans. “Ugh, you guys are all boring.”

“Are you okay?” Steve asks, turning toward Skye. “Because if you don’t want to –

Skye snorts. “Yeah, because I want to give up the opportunity to bang three superheroes at once. Trust me,” she says, “this is just a moment I’m taking in before I lose my mind.”

“I’m signing up for that job,” says James, striding up to her, “I’ve always kind of had a thing for brunettes.”

Simultaneously, Steve and Natasha say, “Hey!”

His eyes are still intent on Skye’s something searching and really, honestly, obscene in them. “Cool your jets, you two,” he says, taking another step toward Skye, “I have a thing for redheads and blondes too.”

“Let’s get back to me though,” says Skye, “because I’m new and I’ve never done this before, alright?”

James nods and, fuck, there’s got to be some Russian training for Prelude to Kissing a Slightly Awkward and Geeky Hacker because, fuck, Natasha and James have that skill down.

However, as Skye’s inherent instinct to be a snarky asshole takes over in the most inappropriate venues, she can’t keep herself from saying, “You gonna kiss me or are you putting on a show for the super friends?”

James chuckles, low and deep, and suddenly Skye can feel Steve and Natasha’s eyes on her, and then James is kissing her.

It’s slow, and it starts off chaste and tantalizing and Skye’s hands – she didn’t do it, it has nothing to do with her – thread into James’ hair. She gasps as he licks into her mouth.

“She makes that noise all the time,” Skye hears Natasha say. “Like, all the time. It’d be adorable, but I’m not kidding when I say all the time.”

Skye flips her off and hears Steve laugh from somewhere behind James.

But he pulls away, and Skye slumps against the wall she was pressed up against at some point.

“Damn,” is all she can muster up to say.

Steve chuckles, rubbing his hand against his neck. “Yeah,” he says, “Bucky has that effect on people.”

Skye studies the three of them for a few seconds. At least, she thinks it’s seconds.

“Does she usually spend eight million years eye fucking?” James asks. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m into it, but I’m getting concerned she’s about to go insane or something.”

Skye rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Barnes. I’m trying to figure out who to kiss next.”

Steve’s expression isn’t far from, “Pick me! Pick me!” but Natasha’s cool detachment is so her that Skye surges forward and pulls Natasha’s lips to hers, kissing her hard and rough.

She can hear Steve say something about feeling left out, and there’s some masculine groans and whatever from behind her, but Natasha’s hands are on Skye’s ass and she’s steering the two of them to the couch, so Skye doesn’t actually mind.

Natasha throws them onto the couch, Skye straddling her lap, and the couch creaks as Steve and James join them. Skye and Steve break away at the same time and look at each other.

“I’ll swap,” says Barnes with a shrug, and with way less grace than she should have around three superheroes, Skye stumbles off of Natasha’s lamp and sort of falls into Steve’s.

He catches her, hands steady and firm before he reaches up to brush some hair out of Skye’s face.

With Barnes it felt like a challenge, some sort of competition that would end with both of them winning, but Steve is very different. With Steve it feels more intimate. Like he’s trying to take care of her or something.

“You’re giving me a weird look,” Skye says, feeling a little breathless.

“He does that,” says James. “Looking at you all moony-eyed and stuff?” He snorts. “Yeah, that’s the patented Steve Rogers Idiot Face.”

“I’m not an idiot,” says Steve. “I just like to appreciate people, that’s all.”

“Appreciate me with your lips,” says Skye, “because talking is nice but there are better and more fun things you can do.”

“Also, I’m feeling extremely neglected over here,” Natasha interjects.

“I really do like her, Nat,” says James, “you should have come up with this idea a lot sooner.”

“Honestly,” says Skye, doing her damnedest to keep herself focused on speaking as Steve’s stupidly huge hands drag up and down her sides, “this started out as a joke. But I’m kind of glad it’s happening anyway.”

James chuckles. “Good to know.” His voice is muffled, and when Skye looks over, his mouth is all over Natasha’s bare skin. Skye swallows hard. She’d expected to feel annoyed if ever a paramour were to be smooched by somebody else, but this is a whole new kind of awesome. Natasha locks eyes with Skye and bites her lip as James’ mouth travels from Natasha’s ribs to her chest.

Skye whimpers, pathetic and needy even to her own ears, and Steve drags her down to his lips.

“Don’t worry,” he says, “we didn’t forget you”

That’s when Captain America’s hands unbutton her shirt, quick and agile and perfect, and he’s cupping Skye and, oh god, she’s going to die.

Her head tilts back and that stupid whimpering keeps happening. Skye bites her lip to make herself quit it, but Steve pulls her close and whispers, “Don’t be quiet, come on,” so she decides that, hell, it’s Captain’s orders.

She rolls her hips against Steve’s, feels him hard through both of their jeans.

“This is probably the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me,” she says as Steve’s lips find her throat and kiss and bite down it until he reaches her collarbone, dragging his lips along until he, fuck, he’s using his teeth to pull her shirt off of her shoulders. Skye will die happy.

“Careful with that shirt,” says Natasha, and, oh, she’s the one whose hands have been trailing up and down Skye’s back. “I like that shirt.”

“Hello,” says Skye, because that’s apparently the best she can do.

“Hi,” says Natasha, and then her lips are against Skye’s neck.

“Thanks for that,” comes a grumble from the other side of the room, and the three of them, Skye, Steve, and Natasha, turn in tandem to look at James, who is on his back on the floor, one leg thrown up on the couch and a pathetic pout on his face.

“What, you jealous?” Skye asks, and in a fit of confidence, she reaches down to palm Steve through his jeans. Steve’s reaction is just what she hoped for, a dropped jaw and a fairly fascinating guttural moan.

“Hey,” says James with a pout, “that’s my job.”

“We’re not all going to fit here,” says Natasha with a strangely pragmatic detachment that probably fits better in the field than in an orgy. “I’m thinking we should move to a bed.”

“We’ve got a California King,” says Steve, and it’s phrased so strangely that Skye can’t help but laugh.

“Oh, fine, if you’re going to laugh at me.” Steve pulls her close to him and catches her lips in his, standing. “Then you’re going to come with me.”

“That’s exactly what I hoped for,” says Skye. “So let’s –”

He shuts her up with another kiss.

Yeah. Captain America’s her new favorite superhero. Black Widow will take first place again at a later time.

Steve carries her into the bedroom, which is really nice, because it means his hands are on her ass, and he has nice hands. Really nice hands.

“Give me back my Skye,” says Natasha, and Skye finds herself flopping on the bed like a fish. Apparently, something about her remained sexy despite the decidedly unsexy flailing, because Natasha crawls on the bed next to her and gets her jeans off in less than a second.

“Really?” says James. “Pink underwear?”

“You have no right to talk when you are definitely still clothed,” grumbles Skye. “But yes, they are pink, and I like them.”

“They don’t match your bra,” says Steve, pulling her up into his lap.

Natasha snorts. “They never do.”

“Can we quit it with the making fun of Skye and get back to making Skye very happy?”

James shrugs and stretches out on the bed next to Steve. “Or we could go to making James very happy.”

Skye rolls her eyes, but she swings her legs around so she’s off of Steve and on top of Barnes.

“Oh,” she says, “so no more Agent Barnes? You’re sticking with James now?”

“You could call me anything you wanted,” he says, and fuck if that wasn’t a growl.

Skye’s out of words, so she leans down and kisses him, hot and wet and, fuck, he’s a good kisser. His fingertips trail down Skye’s back.

“You’re right,” she hears Steve say, “she does make that gaspy noise all the time.”

“Shut up or nobody gets any of my super impressive oral sex skills,” Skye mumbles against Barnes – James’ – lips.

James stops. “What was that now?”

“She’s right,” says Natasha. “She’s amazing. Natural talent.”

James looks concerned. “Better than me?”

Natasha shrugs. “Sorry, James. But yeah.”

He breaks his lips away and sits up, taking Skye with him. “I can’t believe that.”

“I will fight you on this,” says Skye, “I will literally battle you on this.”

“You get Steve, I get Natasha.”

“That’s cheating! You’ve slept with Natasha before!”

James shrugs. “Trouble of the trade.”

Skye glares at him for a second, and then grins. “Well,” she says carefully, “when your boyfriend’s screaming my name in a few minutes, we’ll know who wins.”

“First one to get them off wins?” James asks.

“Hold up!” exclaims Steve. “Are you two seriously going to use me and Nat to settle some sort of, what, sex battle?”

“Yes,” James and Skye answer simultaneously.

Steve and Natasha exchange a glance, then Steve throws his hands up. “Fine,” he sighs, “blow me.”

“You could sound more excited,” says Skye. “But don’t worry,” she pats his thigh, “I’ll get you there.”

“So let’s go with who comes first – ”

“Nope,” says Natasha, “no way. We’re judging on which of you is better, which means you take the time you need.”

Skye nods. “Works for me.” She shoots James a smirk. “You’re gonna lose, metal boy.”

“We’ll see,” says James. “We will see.”

Skye is extremely proud of her blowjob skills. It was an innate ability, kind of like hacking or making perfect that’s what she said jokes. She’s good at it.

No. She’s great at it.

She drags it out slowly, making Steve beg for once (and, yeah, Captain America begging for you? That is one good feeling) and getting interesting, desperate little whines.

She locks eyes with James every once in a while, which adds a whole new dynamic to the situation.

Steve comes when Skye locks eyes with James, and he crosses his eyes, leading Skye to laugh with her mouth still on Steve.

She swallows him down and ignores the fact that she just blew Captain fucking America as she pulls her mouth off. She wipes at the side of her mouth and smirks at Steve. “So,” he says, “verdict?”

He makes this shuddering little noises, somewhere between a groan and a whimper, and can’t even lift his head to meet Skye’s eyes.

“Beat that, Barnes,” she says with a chuckle. He glances up at her and smirks at her – how is he smirking, shouldn’t that mouth be doing other things? – as he gets working again, and Skye scuttles up onto the bed. She watches Natasha bite her lip and make a high pitched noise, and when she locks eyes with Skye, Nat’s back arches off the bed and she makes a noise that sounds a lot like Skye’s name.

While Natasha and Steve come back to themselves, Skye grins at James.

“Did you hear what she said?” Skye asks, singsong.

“Don’t say it,” he growls.

“She said my name.”

“I said don’t say it.”

Skye pouts. “Aw, what are you gonna do?” she crawls over the bed and straddles his hips. “Beg me for it?”

They lock eyes for a moment, and Skye is momentarily worried that she may have overstepped or gone a little farther than she should have. But Barnes rolls his eyes and pulls her close to him, and she wraps her legs around his waist.

“You’re a fucking menace,” he mutters into her ear as he slides inside her, and she lets out a harsh little laugh as she twists her hips.

They move against each other like a challenge for a while, until it builds and builds, but never releases.

Then suddenly Skye gets it.

“Oh, seriously?” she whines. “You’re going to make me wait for it?”

James shrugs. “I’m gonna make you beg for it,” he says, and the way he moves slowly drags against her.

“Finally,” comes Natasha’s voice. “She deserves it.”

“You called my name, remember?” Skye laughs, but the laughter doesn’t last long as Natasha sits up and runs her hands down Skye’s spine.

“Yeah,” says Natasha as she runs her lips along Skye’s jaw until she catches Skye’s lips. “You won, by the way.”

“What?!” exclaims James. “Oh, come on.”

“She yelled Skye when you made her come,” says Steve, popping up from behind James.

James looks absolutely devastated. “Do you agree with her?” he asks, looking like a hurt puppy.

Steve sighs and appears to be weighing the truth against the possibility of never getting laid again. “It’s a tie.”

“Cop out,” Skye grumbles, but suddenly all three of them have their hands on her and, really, thinking’s overrated.

~~~

The next hour or two – years? Skye’s not sure – consist of an outrageous amount of naked superheroes going absolutely bananas on her. She’s not positive when she became the primary target, but when you’ve got Black Widow, the Winter Soldier, and Captain America getting you off in three very different and very awesome ways? Yeah, you don’t complain. You don’t complain one bit.

Steve gets a little petulant for a few minutes afterwards, but when Barnes and Natasha take turns doing something fairly interesting with their tongues on him, he stops.

Skye’s eighty percent sure she’s never going to get over this night.

“Goddamn,” she says with a sigh when it’s all over and she’s announced that she’s too tired to move.

“You’re telling me,” laughs Steve. “That was exciting. I haven’t been with two girls before.”

“You mean you’ve been with one?” Skye asks.

Steve turns to her. “Aren’t you best friends with Darcy?”

Skye’s jaw drops. “Dear sweet Jesus. I had completely forgotten about that.” She stares at Natasha. “Did you remember that?”

Natasha nods. “Duh. You forgot?”

“I got a little overwhelmed because somebody was kissing me while everyone else was doing other things,” Skye says with a scowl, but it doesn’t last very long, because James is running his fingertips up and down her back.

“It was an experience though,” says Steve. “Though I wonder if four is a little much.”

“Yeah,” says James, “did anybody even realize when I got up and got myself a glass of water?”

The period of silence answers him.

“You three are awful,” says James, and he rolls out of bed, landing right on his feet and grabbing a pair of boxers Skye is pretty sure Steve was wearing. “Anybody else want pizza or should I just get one for me?”

“I, for one, am always up for pizza,” says Skye, “but I am incapable of moving right now, so it would be appreciated if you ordered it for me.”

Natasha snorts.

“Jesus, she’s so needy,” says James.

“I thought you would have figured that out when she was doing the whole pleading and begging thing for the eight seconds someone wasn’t touching her,” says Steve. “And when someone was touching her. And when you were fucking her. And basically all the time.”

“I know I should be offended by that,” says Skye, curling against Natasha’s warm side, “but I’m too blissed out, so I’m just going to ignore it.”

Natasha runs her fingertips up and down Skye’s back again, snuggling into her. “Good plan,” Natasha murmurs, “arguing just riles him up more.”

James orders pizza and Skye and Steve end up dozing off for about half an hour until they’re woken up by the two annoying assassins jumping on the bed and pressing cold cans of rootbeer to exposed spots.

Skye sort of hates superheroes. They have mean ideas.

“Come on, wake up!” exclaims Natasha. “You two weenies have pizza waiting.”

“Why the hell,” groans Steve, “does an ex-Russian spy use the word weenie as an insult?”

“Because she hangs out with weenies,” says James, jumping a little too close to Skye’s feet for her liking. “Now come on or I’ll eat all your Hawaiian.”

Skye jumps out of the bed and books it to where her clothes got lost. “Where the hell is my shirt?” she asks, standing in her bra, underwear, and shorts. “Who stole my shirt?”

“Who do you think?” comes Natasha’s voice, but when she turns the corner she’s wearing all her own clothes.

“I’m not confused or anything,” says Skye.

That’s when James struts out, the shirt unfortunately tight on his biceps and not even half able to button across his chest.

“Now that’s just weird,” says Skye.

~~

“Darcy,” says Skye the next morning right before their weekly Saturday brunch/excuse to eat too much breakfast food, “Darcy, I am going to have to tell you something when I see you. It is going to be weird. But I need to tell you.”

“You couldn’t wait eight seconds before I walked in the door?” Darcy asks. “Barnes is right. You are needy.”

“I’m not needy!” exclaims Skye. She pulls out some sugar packets and begins to fiddle with them, stacking them into different piles. “Wait a second. What did you just say?”

Darcy chuckles and Skye hears a jingle through the phone. She looks up and there’s Darcy, wiggling her fingertips at her. “Yeah,” says Darcy across the diner, “Barnes told me about how needy you were.” She leans closer. “In bed. Did you actually beg?”

Skye looks around. “Quiet, Darcy!” Skye hisses. “And sit down before you say anything else ridiculous.”

“I’ve been told that everything I say is ridiculous.”

“That is because you hang out with people like Jane, who don’t understand human people talk,” says Skye. “And besides, you’re not weird about it?”

Darcy throws herself into the seat across the booth from Skye, her purse sliding into the chair and onto the floor. “I should be weird about it?” she asks.

Skye shrugs. “I don’t know! I’ve never been part of an orgy fest before. It’s a new experience for me. Hell, I didn’t even know three people two years ago, and now I’m sleeping with three. Or slept with?” Skye drops her head into her hands. “I don’t know what this means.”

“It means you get to bang Captain America and the Winter Soldier whenever everybody’s up with it, and it means you’re basically dating Black Widow.” Darcy kicks back, tossing her boots up on the table. “You’ve scored.”

“And you don’t have any problem with your friend banging the two guys you bang on a regular basis?” Skye asks. This whole thing was bizarrely new to her.

“Look,” says Darcy, “I wouldn’t care if Steve hopped into the Iron Man suit and got down and dirty with the Hulk. As long as everything’s safe and I don’t get some sort of super STD and I get laid from time to time, I’m good.” She pauses. “Sometimes I like to cuddle. I’ll cuddle sometimes.”

Skye laughs. “You cuddle all the time.”

“Correction,” Darcy says, “I cuddle with you all the time, because you always wear flannel and flannel is cuddle magnetism.”

~~

It was all too good for too long, and Skye should have expected to be deployed on a mission less than forty-eight hours after the Super Sex, as she’d begun to call it.

She, Steve, James, Natasha, and Sam are sent to infiltrate a spin off of Hydra, led by some guy whose name Skye can’t pronounce. Skye was confused by why she was asked to help out, but apparently all his defense systems are computer-based and SHIELD (meaning Skye) couldn’t access them from a distance.

So, with James left as emergency backup if anyone attacks Skye while she’s hacking, or just in case everything goes disastrously wrong, Skye breaks into the system and deactivates the shielding system around the facility while projecting a shadow of the system to maintain the illusion of the defense system.

But even when she’s done with it, she’s still worried she hasn’t done enough.

It only gets worse when they don’t get a response for five minutes. Then ten. Then fifteen.

Skye feels like she’s basically vibrating with anxiety. Now, coms have been down for thirty minutes, and she knows thirty minutes is nothing, but when it’s Steve, Sam, and Natasha out there, when Skye doesn’t know if she broke through the firewall and the electric defense mechanisms in time for them to be safe…

Well, the anxiety is worth it.

“Hey,” says James, pulling her close to him. Skye is always a bit startled when she realizes how he can manhandle her with that arm. She tries desperately hard not to think about how that’s kind of hot and wants him and Natasha to –

“You’re thinking too much,” says James, letting her rest up against him. “They’re going to be okay.”

“You only say that because you’re weirdly calm and sure about everything,” says Skye. Her voice cracks, and she steadies herself. “Which is really annoying, and I hate it.”

James laughs, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “I guess I’ve been through enough to know that Steve’ll always come back for me, somehow,” he says quietly. “And I think I know Nat well enough to know she’ll do the same for you.”

The van’s atmosphere is heavy with the questions Skye wants to ask, with the meaning James just attributed to her relationship with Natasha, and Skye’s not sure how to react to it.

“Also,” James says, grinning, “if Sam died, his sister would probably literally kill him for not getting it with Darcy when we all know it’s about to happen.”

Skye laughs. “I think we’d all kill him if that happened.”

The mood lightens, and they talk back and forth for a few minutes about what just might be happening in Coulson’s office now that Captain America is unable to be reached.

“He’s probably clutching his Cap doll and weeping into its helmet,” Skye snorts.

James pouts. “Hey,” he says, “I have a Cap doll.”

Skye snorts. “And you don’t find that even a little bit strange?”

James shrugs. “Not really. Steve thinks it’s funny. Besides, a little birdy told me that a certain someone owns Black Widow underwear and wears it all the time.”

Skye blushes. “We don’t talk about that,” she says, “Not even a little bit.”

James’ jaw drops. “I was kidding,” he says, looking like Christmas came early.

Skye winces. “Oh, no.”

Then, suddenly, both of them wince as there’s a horrible screeching noise through the coms, something that would have been scary primarily if it hadn’t been so painful.

“Jesus!” James exclaims, trying to jolt away from the noise. “What the fuck was that?”

Skye’s about to answer when she hears, “James? Skye? They’ve been blocking – it’s – Steve has – but Sam – come in?”

Skye turns to James as she speaks. “Hack Attack to Widow, Hack Attack to Widow,” says Skye. “You’re breaking up – what’s going on?”

“Minimal – can’t hear – breaking – stay safe.”

Skye takes a deep breath. “Slowly,” she says into the coms, as calmly as she can, “Say it to me slowly, Nat, if you can.”

“Falcon…hurt,” comes Natasha’s voice, “Cap…combat…Widow…Support.”

James’ face is steely and sullen as he says. “Roger that. Winter Soldier coming in.”

Now, Skye’s taken care of herself for years. YEARS. She walked into enemy territory and got shot for her efforts.

This does not mean she didn’t feel safer with James by her side.

“Be careful,” she demands of him. “And get those idiots to safety.”

James’ grin is silly and a little crooked as he salutes at her. “Whatever you say, Skye.”

The next time Skye has a moment to think calmly is when Nat’s saying, “James here…Skye…Love you.”

And then Skye’s not thinking all over again. She’s monitoring the shadow program, listening carefully to whatever she can hear on the coms, but she’s too focused on those last three words.

And while she’s not thinking, she says, “Get out of there alive, Nat. I love you too.”

And then stops thinking until they’re in front of her again and she’s started up the van, a bleeding Steve stumbling as Nat and James carry Sam, who is complaining about needing to be carried.

Even so, his leg doesn’t look so good.

“Is he okay?” Skye asks, turning around. “Steve, are you okay?”

Steve waves the question off, gasping, and throws himself into the front seat. He holds up a flash drive. “Just go,” he groans, teeth grinding together.

Nobody but Nat, calming Sam, speaks until they get to the SHIELD helicopter equipped with med supplies.

Natasha won’t even look at Skye through the whole ordeal. Not when Sam’s leg is supported in a splint. Not when James hugs them both. Not when the bullet hole in Steve’s gut is being repaired, or when Steve is laughing off the pain while Skye and James tell stupid jokes.

Nat keeps a solid three feet between the two of them the whole time.

They get to New York, and Nat takes a different cab back to their apartment, and Skye can’t help but feeling hurt.

“Did I do something?” Skye asks Steve, her voice small. “What did I do?”

Steve goes to reply, but nothing comes out of his mouth. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry, Skye. I just don’t.”

“I don’t think you did anything wrong,” says James. “I think…” He sighs and pulls her in, hugging her. “I think she just got really scared.”

“Natasha never gets scared,” Skye counters.

She thinks James presses a kiss to the top of her head after saying, “Everybody gets scared.”

~~

Skye comes into the apartment, looking around, and sees Natasha standing in the kitchen with a mug in her hand.

She can’t help herself from lighting up. “Natasha,” she says, “hi, I was –”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Natasha snaps, and she storms into the living room, throwing herself onto the couch.

The sudden shift in Skye’s mood startles her, and she tries desperately not to feel hurt. “Okay,” says Skye. “Then can we talk about something else? Because this is scaring me.” And it is. She doesn’t know what happened. She’s not sure what she did, and she’s worried it’s the three words she said back to Nat.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Natasha brusquely.

“But I am,” says Skye. “I am worried about this. I’m worried about you.”

“No reason to.”

Skye groans and drops onto the couch. “Can you just – if I can’t help, I want to at least know if there’s something that needs to be done. Even if it’s, like, get ice cream and potato chips and The Notebook or something.”

“That movie’s ridiculous,” Natasha grumbles.

Skye sighs, exasperated. “Look, are you mad about what I said earlier?” she asks. “Because it was just as surprising for me as it was for you. I did not expect that to –”

“Just stop!” Natasha shouts, and the break in the cold detachment comes like a bucket of cold water. “Stop, okay?”

“Stop what?” Skye asks, completely confused. “Stop what?!”

“Stop caring!” Natasha exclaims.

“I can’t just stop! It’s not like a light switch!”

Natasha interrupts. “I don’t want you to care. It’s not safe.”

“What’s not safe?” Skye asks.

“Giving a shit about me,” Natasha bites back. “So don’t, okay? I’m a freaking curse. Anyone who’s ever given a damn gets brainwashed or shot or dies. Fuck, they killed my brother once they realized they couldn’t brainwash him out of me.” Her laugh is bitter. Pained. “I cared about him, he cared about me, so he ended up dying for his trouble. So don’t. Don’t care. I’ve got myself covered. I don’t need anyone else to get threatened by me.”

The words say one thing, but Skye slowly processes it. “You don’t threaten me,” she says, confused.

“I should,” says Natasha. “I could kill you in seconds. I’m a machine, basically. You shouldn’t even worry about me.” She laughs, humorless and sharp. “I’m the danger, here.”

It hits Skye like bus. “No one’s ever taken care of you,” Skye says quietly, watching Natasha curl onto herself. “No one’s ever just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

There’s silence for a few moments, into minutes, into so long that Skye’s half forgotten what she’s said when Natasha responds with, “I don’t need anyone to take care of me.”

“Everybody needs somebody to take care of them from time to time,” says Skye, and an involuntary flash to the way Coulson’s been there for her all this time, even though he’s got all of his director duties now.

Natasha turns to her, and Skye realizes with a start that there are actual tears on the Black Widow’s face. It’s something that scares her more than anything else she’s seem in the past year and a half.

“Natasha…?”

“I don’t want to need someone to take care of me,” she says quietly, and Skye can’t help but laugh because she’s been there. She’s still there, sometimes.

But she just crawls across the couch and drapes herself over Natasha in a way that she hopes comes across as a hug.

“Well get used to it,” says Skye, “because you’re stuck with me. Especially since this is my house.”

Natasha shifts and Skye falls against her, their noses bumping.

“If you need to cry, you can keep crying,” says Skye, “but if you can stop, that would be nice, because you’re kind of scaring me right now.” Natasha frowns. “Not in an actual scared way!” Skye amends. “I just – I like it when you smile. And you’re really not smiling right now.”

It looks like Natasha’s debating a response, but she just ends up rolling her eyes and dragging Skye to her in an uncoordinated and somehow perfect kiss. Skye gently holds Natasha’s face in her hands, wiping away some of the tears Skye’d never thought she’d see.

“Who knew you were sappy,” Natasha murmurs against Skye’s lips.

“Oh, shut up,” grumbles Skye, pressing a few kisses to Natasha’s cheeks. “You’re the weepy one.”

“I’m not weepy!” says Natasha, but when she says it she wipes something off her cheek and Skye just quirks an eyebrow. “Shut up.”

Natasha sits up and wraps her arm around Skye, exhaling deeply into her shoulder. “Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” Natasha murmurs, “not like that.”

Skye pulls away, just a little bit, and stares at her. “No one’s ever told you they loved you before?”

Natasha shrugs, her eyes still away from Skye’s. “They’ve told me,” she says. “James. Clint. They’ve said it. But not like you.”

“Like me?”

She lifts her head. “Barnes has had eyes for only Steve since the day his programming was deactivated. Loves me like a sister, I think.” She wrinkles her nose. “No. Like a friend. Sister is very much the wrong word after the other night.”

Skye snorts. “You got that right.” She waits for Natasha to start speaking again, not wanting to spook her into going back into that distant place.

Natasha sighs. “And Clint’s like Darcy. He doesn’t do the whole romantic thing. It’s why we’ve – why we’ve gotten along for so long. He never expected me to give him something I couldn’t, because he’s never wanted it.”

“Natasha, I don’t expect you to feel anything you don’t,” says Skye quietly. “It was battlefield jitters. I totally understand if you didn’t mean it, I promise.”

“That’s just it,” says Natasha, and her gaze on Skye’s is penetrating, but not in the normal way she does it. It’s like she’s trying to say something to Skye instead of trying to draw something from her. “I do feel that way.”

People have told Skye they love her before. A girlfriend, a boyfriend, and an unfortunately naked drunk man who saw she had a van and wanted to sleep there for the night. Nobody’s ever made it so clear and so real without even saying the words.

“Really now,” Skye replies, because it’s the best thing she can come up with at that moment and she’s never actually known how to respond to these things.

Natasha, thank goodness, just laughs, and nods. “Yeah,” she replies. “I think I do. Which is weird.” She frowns. “I’m not sure I like it.”

“You should,” says Skye, leaning back on the couch and pulling Natasha on top of her, “I’m a delight.”

“Yeah you are,” says Natasha, and she nuzzles into Skye’s shoulder. Then, suddenly, her movements stop and she curls up, squishing Skye in a way that’s not quite unpleasant but is definitely not quite comfortable.

“Hello,” says Skye, her nose pressed right up against Natasha’s, “not to insult your super skills, but I’m not sure this is what you were going for.”

“You’re right,” she says, and then…she yawns. She reminds Skye shockingly of a kitten, small and sleepy and comfortable as she presses into Skye. She turns and draws Skye in by the waist, pressing her chin next to Skye’s neck.

“That’s better,” says Skye. She presses back against Natasha, closing her eyes a little as she sighs and hums with a light sort of happiness.

“Want to know something I’ve never told anyone?” Natasha murmurs into Skye’s hair.

“Is it about that time you went undercover as a Hooters waitress?” Skye asks, half asleep. “Because Clint told me about it, and I totally want to see you in those shorts.”

Natasha chuckles, pulling Skye close. “Not that,” she says quietly, “but I’ve never had a girlfriend before. Or a boyfriend.”

Skye turns to her. “Never?”

Natasha shakes her head. “Never had the opportunity to. Always saving the world, destroying the world, or trying not to die. It doesn’t allow for a lot of interpersonal relationships.”

Skye nods. “Is that the thing that you’ve never told anyone?”

Natasha laughs, pressing a kiss to Skye’s shoulder. “No, but people know that. The thing that – that no one knows is that, um,” she giggles. Skye can’t get over that. The Black Widow giggles. “Well, I’ve never had a relationship. But I’ve always – I’ve secretly always…”

“Just spit it out, god, you’re bad at this,” says Skye, poking Natasha in the side. Natasha bites lightly on her neck in retaliation. “Okay, if you do that, neither of us is going to get anything done.”

“Sorry,” says Natasha, but she certainly doesn’t feel it.

“Go on,” says Skye, “tell me your deep dark secret.”

“I’ve always wanted to have a song,” she says quietly.

“Like as in the Taylor Swift ditty?” Skye asks. There’s silence. “Taylor Swift? The song ‘Our Song?’” Skye sings a few lines. “Like that?”

“Sort of,” laughs Natasha. “I guess so.”

“Are you asking me to find a song that’s our song?” Skye asks.

Natasha kisses her neck again. “Only a little bit.”

“Does this mean I can hold it over your head that you’re secretly a romantic even though you spend your time beating the shit out of people and having sex with me in public places?”

Natasha’s silent for a moment. “Only when it’s just the two of us,” she says.

“Deal,” Skye murmurs, and she turns to press her lips to Natasha’s, a slow, easy kiss that doesn’t beg more. Just something that warms Skye and fills her with something she doesn’t think she’s felt before Natasha.

“Want to know one of my secrets?” she asks Natasha.

Natasha nods. “Is this going to be about how you’re secretly obsessed with Lilo and Stitch?” Natasha asks. “Or about how you always have to put your left shoe on first? Oh, it’s going to be the thing about being ambidextrous because the nuns un-did you being a lefty, isn’t it.”

Skye just stares at her. “How did you know all that?”

Natasha shrugs. “I’m going to say to you the same thing I said the first day we met. Do you want the ‘I was a hacker before you hit third grade’ explanation or the ‘I’m a spy’ edge?”

Skye laughs. “Well, you haven’t managed to get this out of me.”

“So shoot,” says Natasha. “What’s something you’ve never told anyone?”

“I can sing,” Skye says.

Natasha rolls over and gives her a weird look. “No you can’t.”

Skye shrugs. “I hide it well.”

“Prove it.”

“I can’t prove it! I’d need music.”

“I can put on music.”

Skye drops her head against the couch cushion. “Next you’re going to demand a karaoke night or something.”

Natasha’s face lights up.

“Oh, no,” says Skye, “no, no, oh, crap.”

“We’re gonna have a karaoke night!” says Natasha. She’s more excited than Skye thinks she’s ever seen her. “What song are you going to sing?”

Skye just stares. “You came up with this idea eight seconds ago.”

“Actually,” says Natasha, pressing a kiss to Skye’s forehead and then leaping away, “you came up with it. Hold on, I’ve got to call Stark. We’ll have it at his place for the... Oh, this is going to be fun.”

Skye just groans. “One of these days,” she grumbles, “one of these days I’ll learn to shut my mouth.”

~~

“Karaoke,” says Clint carefully. “You want us to do karaoke.”

“No,” says Tony, smile far too gleeful, “Natasha wants us to do karaoke. I just…Have given a site for such festivities to occur. Plus,” he adds, shrugging, “It’s my birthday on Saturday and I want to have a big blowout with all my friends.”

“That expression is scaring me,” says Rhodey, folding his arms over his chest. “Is he serious, Romanoff?”

Natasha nods. “There’s a bet that’s been made.”

Skye turns to her. “There’s a bet? When was there a bet?”

Natasha chuckles, low and half scary, half interesting. “I might have made a bet on certain Avenger’s singing voices.”

“Thor?”

Natasha nods.

“So!” says Tony, clapping his hands together. “JARVIS, get the box booming or whatever. It’s time for some karaoke and a celebration of my 29th birthday.”

“Do we all have to do it?” asks Steve, who looks like he’s being physically dragged into the room by James. “I can’t sing.”

“Sure you can,” says James.

“You’re just saying that because you want to do that ridiculous duet,” Steve grumbles.

Almost instantaneously, Tony, Natasha, Sam, and Darcy light up like Christmas trees. “Duet?” Darcy asks. “Please tell me that’s what I think it is.”

“JARVIS,” says James, almost throwing Steve onto the makeshift stage Tony set up, “please play ‘Fancy’ by Iggy Azalea.”

Darcy looks like she’s having a religious experience, and she turns to Skye. “Pinch me,” she says, “not even in a sexy way. Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

“You’re not dreaming,” says Skye. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“I’m about to watch either Captain America or the Winter Soldier rap,” says Sam, stepping in next to Darcy. “Five years ago neither of them were even alive, and now I’m going to watch them rap to Iggy Azalea.” He frowns. “They could have at least done Nicki Minaj…”

“Right?” says Darcy, looking disturbingly excited. “Right?! Come on,” she grabs Sam’s hand and drags him, “I want front row seats.”

Sam throws Skye and Natasha a slightly panicked look as he stumbles along with Darcy.

“Did you plan this with Barnes?” Skye asks. “Because this just stinks of Russian Superspy comradery. Or shenanigans.”

Natasha shrugs. “He and Tony may have been the first two I texted.”

Skye snorts and drops her head against Natasha’s shoulder. “You’re insane,” she mutters.

“Yeah,” Natasha replies, “but you love it.”

Skye leans up, meeting Skye’s eyes. “Yeah,” she says quietly, “yeah, I kind of do.”

“Quit the lovey dovey bullshit over there, ladies,” shouts Tony. “We’re about to watch ninety year olds getting down.”

The music begins, and Steve just stands there, staring at James with complete confusion.

“Do they actually know the song?” Skye mutters, but immediately her answer is given when James begins rapping the first verse.

And he’s GOOD.

“Why can he rap?” Skye hisses. “How can he rap? Is that some Winter Soldier programming?”

“Nope,” says Natasha. “Just natural talent.”

The same cannot be said of Steve, who stumbles his way through the first round of the chorus. While James starts rapping again, Tony manages to whack Steve on the back three times, throw him a bottle of vodka, and push him back onstage before the chorus comes back.

During the chorus, Steve sings about how fancy he is after swallowing a mouthful of vodka, while James dances around him with the bottle in his hand.

“Is James grinding on Steve?”

Skye turns to Clint. “When did you get here?”

“The science kids heard about it over the coms and dragged me over.”

Bruce rolls his eyes a little bit. “I’m older than you, Clint. But I agree. The other three are kids.”

“Hey!” Jemma, Jane, and Fitz exclaim at the same time, and the three of them have the exact same expression on their faces.

“Aw,” says Skye, “they really are science kids.”

“Guys, shut up!” exclaims Darcy. “Steve started rapping!”

Steve is much looser now, shaking his ass in a way Skye never assumed Captain America could do. And she’s seen him in bed.

Tony slides up next to Skye, a wry grin on his face. “Gift from Thor,” Tony chuckles. “Asgardian Ale.”

“Oh, fuck,” says Natasha. “They’re making out.”

It looks like James and Steve were both affected by the alcohol, as they’re currently all over each other on stage.

“Was there some sort of aphrodisiac in that?” Natasha asks.

Tony shakes his head. “Nah. Just enough alcohol that it’ll take down some of the walls put up by the supersoldier serum.” He looks over to where the two of them have half stumbled off the stage before the music’s even stopped. “It’s kind of sweet.”

Everybody winces as James loses his balance entirely and collapses on top of Steve.

“Okay,” says Sam, “up you two idiots go. Time for the next song.”

Natasha smacks Skye’s butt, but Skye shakes her head rapidly. “Not yet,” Skye hisses, “can’t do it yet – once everybody else is drunk.”

It looks like Natasha’s about to argue, but then Jemma interrupts. “I’ll go!” she chirps.

“JARVIS,” she calls, “Protocol 812, if you will.”

“Stripped of vocals, I’m assuming, Dr. Simmons?”

“Yes, thank you, JARVIS.”

The entire room turns their faces, not to Jemma, who is walking up to the stage, but to Tony. Skye does her best not to snort at the absolute incredulity on Tony’s face

He’s silent for a few moments, looking from Jemma to the ceiling. “Protocols?” Tony shrieks. “How have you two integrated protocols into my system?”

“Drs. Fitz and Simmons have done impressive modifications to my system,” says JARVIS. “We have become friends.”

“Don’t worry, sir,” says Leo, “JARVIS is still entirely your programming. Just with some extra pizazz.”

“Never say ‘pizazz’ in my presence,” says Tony. He throws himself into a chair, pouting. “I’ll be waiting here if anyone wants to apologize.” That’s when he starts pouting. “My birthday and they commandeer my computerized best friend.”

Skye takes a front row seat next to Darcy, and Natasha plops herself right in Skye’s lap.

“Hello,” Skye laughs.

“Are we ready, JARVIS?”

“We may begin, Dr. Simmons.”

Suddenly, Trapt’s Headstrong begins blaring through the speakers.

It’s over four minutes of Jemma Simmons, who everyone knows to be a bubbly, happy little thing with an attitude to cheer up Oscar the Grouch, screaming into the microphone.

When the song is over, Skye just stares up at her.

“Jemma,” she says carefully, “is everything okay?”

“Of course,” Jemma replies, smile sunny as ever. The change in mood is disconcerting. “Why?”

“We just want to let you know we care,” says Fitz.

“It’s a safe space,” adds Sam.

“That was awesome!” James shouts from where he’s snuggling with Steve.

All eyes turn to Tony. “It was okay,” he says, but he refuses to make eye contact with anyone else.

Natasha rolls her eyes. “Spoilsport.” She leaps off of Skye’s lap. “Skye’s turn!”

“What?”

“Go Skye!” says Steve with a grin.

James winks at her in this ridiculous way, and she makes a note to try reprogramming B-James’, not Barnes’ – arm to flip people off all the time.

She chooses her song and takes a deep breath, trying not to lock eyes with Tony, who is inexplicably hip thrusting, despite the lack of music at that moment.

The tapping sticks begin, and Skye begins the first verse, and when she gets to the point where the lyric is, “With the exception of you, I dislike everyone in the room,” Tony stops hip thrusting and just pouts while Pepper rolls her eyes.

Natasha’s eyes are locked on her as she sings, and Skye would be horribly uncomfortable if it weren’t for the way Natasha is staring back.

Somebody shouts, “Just go – ” and is cut off, and Skye breaks away for a moment to see Steve with his hand in the air, looking like he’d just whacked Clint over the back of the head.

Skye finishes the song and steps off the stage, feeling unreasonably hot as she walks toward Natasha. She can feel all eyes on the two of them as she sidles up next to Nat.

“So,” she says, “what do you think?”

Natasha just blinks. “I think,” she says calmly, “that it is my turn.”

And she leaves for the stage.

Skye stares after her. “What?!” she asks to no one. “What? I don’t even get a kiss after that? What?”

Somebody strong claps her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about Nat,” says Steve, “she’s probably about to do something disgustingly romantic.”

“Does Nat do romantic?” Clint asks.

Skye shrugs. “If there’s a blue moon and a meteor shower at the same time.”

Steve goes to say something, but the music starts.

And Skye is appalled.

“Does this even count as a romantic song?” Clint asks.

Skye can’t respond, because she’s too busy just staring, open mouthed, at the stage. “Is she singing Wonderwall?” Skye asks, horrified. “Is this happening right now? Am I dating someone who thinks Oasis is quality music?” She groans. “I knew there had to be a catch somewhere.”

Steve shrugs. “I like the song. It’s nice.”

“You would,” James responds.

“You know Oasis?” Skye asks.

He blinks, and slowly nods. “Actually, yeah,” he says carefully. “Oh, man, yeah. I – when I was…him, I was a college student somewhere.” He furrows his brow for a minute, his eyes focusing on something in the past. “I think I temporarily went to Northeastern for a while in the nineties.” He looks horrified. “Oh, my god.”

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, concerned. “Is it a memory? What do you need?”

“I need brain bleach,” says James, his face looking disgusted, “I was on a mission to take out a professor working on some sort of weapon cloaking device and I posed as…as…” He sighs. “I was in a Nirvana cover band.”

Skye’s jaw dropped. “Please say that again,” she says slowly, “so I know I didn’t hallucinate all of that.”

“Nirvana cover band,” James says. He looks half horrified, and half amused, and Steve just looks like he’s trying desperately not to laugh.

“Don’t do it,” says James, “don’t. Whatever it is, don’t.”

“Were you in –”

“Don’t – ”

“Nirvana?”

James and Skye groan in tandem. The sheer number of bad puns they’ve had to put up with since Tony gave him a book called “Dad Jokes” is immeasurable, and Steve seems to enjoy embracing the old dude bit of it whenever he feels like it. Kind of like how James pulls out his stupid fake reading glasses whenever he wants to make Skye uncomfortable in meetings.

Which she will never admit to, but it totally happens, and then she ends up dragging Natasha into a broom closet afterwards.

“Guys,” says Steve, “Nat’s done.”

Skye’s jaw drops. “She’s done?” she says. “I didn’t hear her!”

“She sang ‘Wonderwall’,” says James. “What’s there to miss?”

Clint basically shoves Natasha off the stage and puts on a song, and Skye drops her forehead on the table when she realizes that he’s singing to Bootylicious and trying to keep up with all three parts.

“I don’t think he’s ready for that jelly,” muses Steve.

“See?” says James. “You are capable of being funny. Wait. How do you know this song?”

Steve looks over at the two of them and raises a single eyebrow. “Please,” he says, “I may be 90, but who the fuck can resist early era Destiny’s Child?”

“I don’t know what’s happening here,” says Skye, feeling a little out of her element. “You people are superheroes. You are people tasked with saving the world. And two of you are obsessed with Destiny’s Child.”

“Well,” says Steve, “I wouldn’t say obsessed – ”

“Steve, you did a strip tease to Partition three nights ago,” says James, rolling his eyes.

Skye pouts. “And you didn’t record it?”

James says “Of course not!” but within thirty seconds, Skye’s phone buzzes in her pocket.

She shoots him a grin. “Thank you, James,” she says with a grin.

Steve groans. “I hate both of you.”

“No you don’t,” says James, “besides, I have to do homework tonight, which means glasses.” He waggles his eyebrows

“Being hot doesn’t make me not hate you,” says Steve, grinning.

“I’m with him,” Skye adds. But the conversation trails when Natasha walks over to the group of them.

“Hey guys,” she says with a grin. “What did you think?”

Skye looks at James, then at Steve, then at the floor. “Um.”

Then, to her surprise, Natasha starts laughing. “Oh, god,” she says, “I saw your faces. I had to. I HAD to.”

“What?” Skye asks. “What?”

“What she said,” James adds.

Natasha’s grin is wolfish and sly, and immediately Skye realizes they’d all been snowed.

“Hah,” says Tony, popping into the conversation, “she conned all of you. I love it.”

“Go away, Tony,” says Skye, poorly directing her frustration, but not caring even a little bit.

Tony pouts. “Fine.”

Natasha starts laughing. “I did. It was fun. Now come on,” says Natasha, grabbing Skye by the arm, “I’m going to give you a couple orgasms in that broom closet.” She turns to Steve and Bucky. “Tony turned off that stupid Frozen song, right?”

James shrugs. “We’ve learned to tune it out.”

Steve whacks him on his left arm, and James pouts at him. “Hey!” he says. “That theoretically hurt.”

“And you’re theoretically a supersoldier,” says Steve. “And, yes, the knocking is now only knocking.”

“I can’t believe I couldn’t hack that,” Skye mumbles. “I’ve hacked everything, but I couldn’t hack that.”

“Shut up and come with me.”

Skye waves at the boys. “Alright,” she says to Natasha. She gives the boys a sly look. “Toodle-oo.”

Natasha pulls open the door and has Skye pressed up against it in a second or less, and has dropped to her knees in maybe five.

“No kisses?” Skye asks, feeling kind of disappointed. “I wanted kisses.”

“Later,” says Natasha, “you and your stupid song got me riled up.”

Skye drops her head back again the door frame as Natasha pulls down her jeans and panties. “That was the point,” she says. “I’m glad it worked.”

Natasha looks up at her, expression that of ridiculous surety that she always has right before she’s about to go down on Skye. “Oh yeah,” says Natasha, “it worked.”

Natasha makes good on her promise of a couple orgasms. Skye tries to count, and she thinks it’s five, because that’s what she cries out at the end of one, and Natasha just stares at her.

“Oh, baby,” Natasha coos, “too much?”

Natasha freezes.

“Baby?” Skye asks curiously.

“I’m sorry,” says Natasha, looking worried and scared, and Skye hates seeing her like that, “I don’t know where that came from.”

Skye considers it for a moment, then says, “Don’t be sorry.”

“What?”

Skye pulls Natasha to standing, and pulls her in, kissing her. She tries to quell the flame that ignites when she tastes herself on Nat’s lips, and says, “Call me baby,” she says. “I think I like it.”

~~

“So,” says Darcy when Skye walks out a few minutes later, walking a little funny and feeling utterly blissed out. “Five?”

“Huh?” Skye asks, still in a daze.

“What’s five?”

Skye stares at her, coming back down to earth. “What do you mean, what’s five?”

Darcy smirks. “It’s gotta be something pretty good,” she offers, “because you screamed it pretty loudly.”

Skye can feel her face fall. “Oh dear god,” she says. “People heard that?”

Darcy shrugs. “Only a select handful of people who are in tune to sex sounds.”

Skye sighs. “So you and Barnes heard it.”

“And Steve. And Clint.”

“Because you’re all little shits.”

“Hey, baby, I think – ” Natasha stops talking when she sees Darcy. “Oh. Hey.”

“She calls you baby?” Darcy asks. “That’s so cute!”

“Don’t scare her off,” Skye snaps, “it’s new, and I want to keep it.”

Darcy makes this “aw, honey,” sort of expression. “That’s adorable,” she says. “Now tell me what five is.”

Natasha chuckles.

“What?” Darcy asks. “What’s five?”

“Yeah,” says James, mocking her eager tone, “What’s five?”

“Shut up, Barnes,” says Darcy, but it’s good natured, with a light hip bump.

“Seriously, though,” says James. “What’s five? We’re dying to know.”

Natasha smirks. “It’s Skye losing track.”

“Losing track of what?” Steve asks. James gives him a look, and his eyes go comically wide. “Oh.” Then he grins. “Good work, Nat.”

Natasha gives him an odd look. “Glad to please the Captain?” she says hesitantly.

Steve snorts. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

The look on James’ face is priceless.

~~

Then, suddenly, nobody’s dying, but nobody’s got much time, either. Skye’s still working on her program, expanding it to identify people in need by viewing facebook feeds, blog posts, and other easily accessible internet information. She’s secretly trying to support people who see and experience things they shouldn’t have, get them to SHIELD to allow them to get the support they need.

Steve, in a massive shocker to the public but not even slightly surprising to anyone at SHIELD, has taken a break from fighting crime (because, as Steve says, there’s not much crime to merit a two super soldiers) to support underfunded schools and has devised an anti-bullying policy with Pepper, Leo, and Jemma, who assist as needed and help encourage STEM teaching in schools. Leo and Jemma are still working on multiple projects, but they’ve developed an easy serenity in the contained environment next to each other.

James is in his second year of college, and Skye pretends she doesn’t totally have a thing for the glasses, but apparently she doesn’t hide it well. And Natasha gets her own glasses, which are even more appealing.

She starts seeing less of Natasha and less of James, what with Natasha being on missions more than she wasn’t and James being in school, but she’s seeing more of Steve and Darcy.

And they’ve developed a game called, “Google the Avengers,” which consists of googling the Avengers, and whoever finds the best thing in the first ten pages wins.

So when, one day, what Darcy finds on “Natasha+booty” and a photo of Skye and Natasha comes up that Skye didn’t know had been taken, captioned with, “Black Widow's Got a Gal,” well, they all agree that she wins.

“Am I though?” Skye asks, cradling a bottle of tequila. “Because I still have no idea. I don’t know ANYTHING.”

Darcy chuckles. “Oh, Skye,” she says, drinking her glass of wine. “You’re so cute when you drink.”

“No,” laughs Steve, “she’s not. She’ll either start talking about her relationship to computers or crying about Disney movies.”

“I will not!” Skye exclaims. “But, like, ALL the moms are dead. And most of the dads. There’s,” she takes a steadying breath. “There are so many orphans.”

“That is nobody’s fault but yours,” says Darcy.

Skye starts talking about how sad it was that Nemo lost all of his siblings and his mom in less than five seconds, and she’s about to begin her analysis on how the barracuda represents fate, when her phone rings. “Hey guys!” she says, pointing to her phone. “It’s Natasha.”

Darcy nods. “So answer it, you dweeb.”

“I am not a dweeb,” says Skye, picking up her phone. “I am a geek.” She answers it. “Hi,” she chirps. “Darcy called me a dweeb.”

Natasha laughs. “You are a dweeb,” she says, “but I’m coming home tomorrow night. Just finished up the mission.”

Skye sits up. “You took out the Hydra cell?” she asks excitedly. “Already? That was supposed to be a three week mission.”

“Well,” says Natasha, “I made it a two week mission.”

“So I get you for an extra week?” Skye asks, sounding eager.

“Somebody’s excited,” says Natasha. “But, yeah. I’m coming home.”

They talk for another few minutes until Natasha interrupts Skye’s analysis of the barracuda and says, “They’re boarding. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Love you!” Skye says.

“Love you too,” says Natasha, “dweeb.”

Skye makes Steve and Darcy put on Finding Nemo and watches it with unbreakable attention until she falls asleep, snuggled between Steve and Darcy, because she knows if she falls asleep faster, she gets Natasha back sooner.

~~

Skye throws herself into Natasha’s arms when she gets back, right in front of everybody at SHIELD.

And Natasha kisses her.

Of course, they’re significantly less adorable when they’re at home, and Skye wouldn’t ask for anything different.

“Move over,” says Natasha, coming into bed with a bowl of – oh, of course, she’s stolen Skye’s Cheetos. Again.

“When did I say you could eat in bed?” Skye asks, bringing up Netflix on her laptop.

Natasha’s smirk turns sly. “I eat a lot of things in bed.”

Skye hits her with a pillow. “Not funny. You should check your facebook, by the way.”

Natasha frowns. “Not again.”

Skye shrugs. “It’s even more relevant now.”

Natasha rolls out of bed and hits the ground leaping – actually leaping, was Skye sleeping with a fucking gazelle, Jesus – and takes off to see her laptop. “I’m going to kill you, Skye!” she shouts from the living room.

“Wait until after I get Netflix set up so I have something to watch,” Skye calls back, and she switches to her SHIELD facebook tag to watch herself post, “I like it when Natasha pins me down xoxo Gossip Hacker.”

It’s not wrong, so Skye leaves it up.

“You’re not even going to give me the satisfaction of deleting it?” Natasha calls. “Come on, I came up with a new program to mess with the website!”

“Nope,” says Skye. “Because it’s true.”

Natasha storms in. “Fine then,” she says, “then I’m going to give you orgasms until you comply.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” says Skye, pulling Netflix back up. “But you need to wait until I finish up season eight. I need to figure out what happens with Lily and the art job.”

Natasha throws herself on the bed. “But I’m bored and I want to do stuff. With you. Naked things, probably.”

Skye sighs, ignoring Natasha’s fingers on her shoulders. “Whatever. I have things to do, and you can wait.” But she can’t keep herself from grinning a little.

“I’m sure I can distract you.” Natasha trails her fingertips up Skye’s back.

“Not gonna work,” says Skye, shrugging. She was finishing this How I Met Your Mother season 8 Marathon that evening and she wasn’t going to get interrupted by no spy. And then she’ll binge watch season nine over the weekend while Natasha goes off on one of her strange-not vacations that she always comes back from looking tan and relaxed.

Skye kind of wants to tag along on one of those missions at some point.

Natasha presses her lips along Skye’s neck. “Ooh,” says Skye, “shirtless Neil Patrick Harris. I like this episode already.”

“Hmm,” says Natasha. “Maybe I need to pull out the big guns.”

“I think NPH is the one with the big guns, actually,” says Skye, and he can’t keep herself from smirking.

Natasha runs her hands down Skye’s arms, catching her fingertips and entwining them. “Come on,” she whispers, tugging at Skye’s earlobe with her teeth.

“Not convinced yet,” says Skye, trying to keep herself from reacting. It’s hard, because Natasha’s kissing down Skye’s neck now and pushing the front of Skye’s shirt up.

“How about now?” Natasha asks, unclasping Skye’s bra. She slides her fingertips to Skye’s breasts, cupping her.

Skye readies herself, hoping her voice comes out steady even though she’s biting the inside of her cheek not to react. “Nope,” she says, “nothing. Gotta try harder.”

Natasha’s lips find their way to Skye’s temple, her cheek.

And that’s when Skye caves. She turns her head and catches Natasha’s lips in hers, pushing the laptop out of the way and letting Natasha pull her close. Skye’s shirt is unbuttoned and somewhere on the floor before she’s even sure what’s happened. There’s a brief moment when the two of them get caught (because Natasha’s bra is front clasp and how exactly could she have expected Skye to know that, seriously?!) in some bra straps and bands somehow (it’s not Skye’s fault.)

(It’s entirely Skye’s fault.)

But then they’re pressed against each other and Natasha’s gasping against her lips. It’s these moments that Skye lives for.

“I think I like it when you make that noise,” Skye says, pressing her lips to Natasha’s neck. She presses Natasha to the bed with a grin. “Do it again.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “This is new.”

Skye throws her leg over Natasha’s hips, leaning over her. “I thought we could try something interesting.”

“Oh, you think you’re going to top me tonight?” she laughs. “I suppose I can let it happen just this once.” Natasha sighs and slides her fingertips along Skye’s stomach. “So are you going to make a move or are you going to just sit there?”

“Well,” says Skye, “you make me wait for an absurdly long time every time. I figured I’d take as long as I can.”

“That’s not fun,” Natasha says with a pout.

“It’s fun for me,” says Skye. She leans back, sitting on her heels. “But if you’re not interested, I can always go back to my show.”

“You are the worst girlfriend,” Natasha grumbles, and that makes Skye pause.

“I’m the what now?” Skye asks.

Natasha freezes. “Oh,” she says, “we haven’t said the g-word yet.”

“Gangsta?” Skye asks, tilting her head to the side. “I’ve said that multiple times, predominantly in the usage, ‘Steve and James, no matter how hard you go when rapping, you are not gangsta.’”

Natasha rolls her eyes and drops her head against the pillows. “You’re the worst,” she groans.

“Nah,” says Skye. “You just never asked me, and I think you should ask me.”

Natasha sits up, pulling Skye into her lap and resting her hands on Skye’s thighs. “Skye NoLastName,” says Natasha seriously, “will you be my girlfriend?”

Skye grins. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“You are the WORST!” Natasha laughs, but when she threads her fingertips through Skye’s hair, Skye can’t help but whisper, “Yes, I will,” against Natasha’s lips.

~~

EPILOGUE

It's been a long mission. Six straight weeks, to be exact. Natasha had to infiltrate a facility using children as drug mules - the looks on their faces will haunt Natasha for years.

All she wants to do now is curl up on the couch in the Avengers common room with Skye maybe some other people that don’t bug her. Maybe do a little snuggling. Maybe a kiss or two. Skye texted her a few hours before that there was an Avengers tower movie night going on, and that she couldn’t wait to see Natasha.

It sounds perfect. Natasha hasn't got the energy for anything else. She kind of just wants a break from reality.

She's debating the choice of going straight to the shower or taking half a moment to see Skye first, and realizes that she'd rather see a person than take a shower. Which might be a first.

When Natasha gets into the common room, she is immediately assaulted with the view of Bucky and Steve passed out on top of each other on the couch.

And on top of Skye, who looks extremely uncomfortable and a little stuck.

"Help," Skye squeaks. "I'd move them on my own, but they won't wake up no matter how loud I yell. I can't hit them awake, because my arms are pinned, and I couldn't move one supersoldier let alone two on my best day."

Natasha falls against the wall laughing, surprised she remembers how to. "Wait," she says, "you watched a movie with these two and they just, what, fell asleep on top of you?"

"There were more people here before!" Skye says. "But then May went to bed at, like, nine, Sam left to make popcorn an hour ago and never came back, and Darcy followed him to bother him about the popcorn half an hour ago and never - " Skye pauses. "Oh, god, of course."

Natasha pulls herself together and leans over to press a kiss to Skye's forehead. "I'll get you out of this," she says, "just watch and learn."

Natasha braces a foot against the couch, grabs James' metal arm, and pulls it toward her as she pushes the couch away with her leg.

James, who is still curled around Steve, plummets to the floor, taking Steve with him.

They're both up in an instant, looking around.

"Earthquake?" Steve asks.

"Flood?" James says. He looks hilarious with his stupid hipster glasses all wonky on his face.

Natasha turns to Skye. "How many times have I told you not to let these idiots watch disaster movies?"

"I was overruled," Skye says with a shrug. "I voted for Clueless alongside Sam, but Darcy hit us with pillows until we agreed to 2012."

"I, for one, wanted to watch Day After Tomorrow," James says.

With an eye roll, Skye throws a pillow at James' head, but he catches it with his metal arm and whips it back to Skye, pelting her in the face.

"Now that was just cruel," says Skye, but she hugs the pillow to the chest and stretches out on the couch. "But now the couch is mine. So who really wins?"

Natasha tries to stop from staring too fondly at the goofball on the couch. "Come on, boys, up you get," says Natasha, nudging James with her toe. "And you should probably apologize to my girlfriend, who is very small."

"I'm not that small."

"You're pretty small," says Steve, running a hand through his hair, "and I'm sorry I fell asleep on top of you."

"I'm not," says James, "your thigh makes a really nice pillow."

Natasha raises a single eyebrow at Skye, who avoids her eyes. "He asked nicely if he could doze off in my lap, okay?" Skye says.

"Don't worry," says Steve, "he turned the puppy dog eyes on Skye. No one can resist those."

"Plus," says Skye, "your head is the only one I want between -"

"Too much information," says Steve. "Please apologize, Buck, before Natasha rips our heads off and feeds them to Hulk."

“We’ve all had sex before,” says James, “like, all of us, same time. Twice. And, somehow, cuddling’s out of bounds.”

“I wasn’t part of the cuddling,” says Natasha.

"I'm sorry I got handsy," says James, but the smirk on his face says he's anything but. "And I’m sorry Skye’s thigh makes such a nice pillow.”

Natasha flies at James, tackling him to the floor, and Steve catches Skye before she can fall off the couch from laughing so hard.

“Not you too!” Natasha complains, but that’s when James starts tickling her.

“Save me, Obi Wan Natasha!” exclaims Skye as Steve picks her up over his shoulder. “You’re my only hope!”

It’s a strange sight, this. Natasha has a girlfriend. Natasha’s back from a mission that should have destroyed her, should have sent her back where she gets stuck in her own head, in her work, where she’s secretly afraid of everything, predominantly people. She hasn’t showered in three days, and she probably smells like oil spill and sweat.

But she’s messing around with two of her best friends, and that same girlfriend, and she feels safe. She’s happy.

And when she realizes she loves and is loved, it hits her like a brick in the chest.

“Freeze,” says James. “Talia’s crying.”

“Am not!” exclaims Natasha, but Skye’s tackled her by this point, pressing her to the ground.

“What’s wrong, buttercup?” Skye asks, but that grin on her face makes Natasha cry more and, what the hell, is she broken? What is this?

“False alarm,” says Skye, “these are happy tears.” She bends down and presses a kiss to Natasha’s lips. When she leans back, her nose wrinkles. “Not to be an ass or anything, but you need a shower.”

“Then I’m taking you with me,” says Natasha. She stands and grabs Skye by the hand, tugging her down the hall.

“Is this National Manhandle Skye day?” Skye complains, stumbling after Natasha.

“How come you get to drag her places and I don’t?” calls James, but he shuts up quickly, and Natasha chances a look behind her to see that Steve’s kissing James within an inch of his life.

She still can’t get over how strange it is for her to see him here, but it’s strange in a good way.

“Yeah, they’re hot, I get it, but I thought we were showering,” says Skye, and Natasha can’t help but kiss away the pout.

“We are showering,” says Natasha, and they stumble into the locker room Stark made for Natasha (each Avenger has their own locker room, it’s disgusting) and she turns on the shower. “And then we might make out for a while.”

Skye pushes her into the water, and Natasha makes a very un-Natasha squeak as the cold water rushes over her skin. “At least let me get naked first!”

Skye shrugs and steps in after her. “I figured I could help with that.” Skye’s lips go to Natasha’s as she unzips Natasha’s Widow uniform and pushes it to the ground. “God, those onesies are helpful.”

“You’re so weird,” says Natasha against Skye’s lips, and it takes her no time at all to unbutton that purple plaid shirt and throw it somewhere else in the locker room.

“You better not steal that again,” Skye laughs, reaching behind herself to unhook her bra.

Natasha shrugs and pulls Skye against her, a little surprised at this second wind after having been exhausted for three straight weeks, but she figures it has a lot to do with the mostly naked girl in front of her. “I’ll do what I want,” Natasha says.

“So you should probably consider doing me,” Skye says, her wink garish and ridiculous and so perfectly Skye that Natasha has to kiss her again.

Yeah, Natasha thinks. This is strange. But definitely in a good way.


End file.
